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Bits  of  Gossip 


By 

Rebecca  Harding  Davis 

Author  of "  Silhouettes  of  American  Life'"'' 
"  Doctor  WarricVi  Daughters  " 


Boston  and  New  York 

Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Company 

The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge 

z904 


COPYRIGHT    I904   BY    REBECCA   HARDING   DAVIS 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  October  IQ04 


It  always  has  seemed  to  me  that 
each  human  being,  before  going  out  into  the 
silence,  should  leave  behind  him,  not  the  story 
of  his  own  life,  but  of  the  time  in  which  he 
lived,  —  as  he  saw  it,  —  its  creed,  its  purpose, 
its  queer  habits,  and  the  work  which  it  did  or 
left  undone  in  the  world. 

Taken  singly,  these  accounts 
might  be  weak  and  trivial,  but  together,  they 
would  make  history  live  and  breathe.  Think 
what  flesh  and  color  the  diaries  of  an  English 
tailor  and  an  Italian  vagabond  have  given  to 
their  times ! 

Some  such  vague  consideration 
as  this  has  made  me  collect  these  scattered 
remembrances  of  my  own  generation,  and  of 
some  of  the  men  and  women  in  it  whom  I 
have  known. 

I  have,  of  course,  only  spoken  of 
the  dead,  whose  work  is  done. 


535195 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  In  the  Old  House i 

II.  Boston  in  the  Sixties        ....  28 

III.  In  the  Far  South 65 

IV.  The  Scotch-Irishman         ....  84 
V.  The  Civil  War 109 

VI.   The  Shipwrecked  Crew     ....  140 

VII.  A  Peculiar  People 161 

VIII.  Above  their  Fellows         ....  196 


BITS  OF  GOSSIP 


IN  THE  OLD   HOUSE 

The  world  that  we  lived  in  when  I  was  a 
child  would  seem  silent  and  empty  to  this 
generation.  There  were  no  railways  in  it,  no 
automobiles  or  trolleys,  no  telegraphs,  no 
sky-scraping  houses.  Not  a  single  man  in 
the  country  was  the  possessor  of  huge  accu- 
mulations of  money  such  as  are  so  common 
now.  There  was  not,  from  sea  to  sea,  a  trust 
or  a  labor  union.  Even  the  names  of  those 
things  had  not  yet  been  invented. 

The  village  in  Virginia  which  was  our 
home  consisted  of  two  sleepy  streets  lined 
with  Lombardy  poplars,  creeping  between  a 
slow-moving  river  and  silent,  brooding  hills. 
Important  news  from  the  world  outside  was 
brought  to  us  when  necessary  by  a  man  on  a 
galloping  horse. 

But  such  haste  seldom  was  thought  ne- 
cessary.   Nobody  was  in  a  hurry  to  hear  the 

[i] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

news.  Nobody  was  in  a  hurry  to  do  any- 
thing, least  of  all  to  work  or  to  make  money. 
It  mattered  little  then  whether  you  had 
money  or  not.  If  you  were  born  into  a  good 
family,  and  were  "  converted,"  you  were  con- 
sidered safe  for  this  world  and  the  next. 

Incomes  were  all  small  alike.  Indeed, 
among  gentlefolk  it  was  considered  vulgar  to 
talk  of  money  at  all  —  either  to  boast  that 
you  had  it,  or  to  complain  of  your  lack  of  it. 
This  was  a  peculiar  trait  of  the  times,  and, 
I  suspect,  grew  out  of  one  dogma  of  the 
religious  training  which  then  was  universal. 
Every  child  was  taught  from  his  cradle  that 
money  was  Mammon,  the  chief  agent  of  the 
flesh  and  the  devil.  As  he  grew  up  it  was  his 
duty  as  a  Christian  and  a  gentleman  to  ap- 
pear to  despise  filthy  lucre,  whatever  his  secret 
opinion  of  it  might  be. 

Besides,  the  country  was  so  new,  so  raw, 
that  there  were  few  uses  for  wealth.  You 
must  remember  that  in  the  early  thirties 
Philadelphia,  New  York,  and  Boston  were  in 
the  same  condition  as  to  population,  wealth, 
and  habits  of  life  as  the  fourth-rate  country 


In  the  Old  House 

town  of  to-day.  Richmond  and  St.  Louis 
boasted  loudly  of  their  eight  thousand  in- 
habitants. San  Francisco  was  a  bear  den,  and 
Chicago  a  hamlet.  The  majority  of  Ameri- 
cans, both  men  and  women,  were  then  busy 
with  farming  or  other  manual  labor,  and  the 
so-called  gentry  had  no  operas,  no  art  galler- 
ies, no  yearly  trips  to  Europe  to  drain  their 
thin  incomes. 

Between  the  small  towns  scattered  over 
the  continent  stretched  the  wilderness,  broken 
here  and  there  by  the  farms  of  squatters. 
Through  this  wilderness  the  rivers,  canals, 
and  one  solitary  road  carried  travelers  and 
trade. 

Our  village  was  built  on  the  Ohio  River, 
and  was  a  halting  place  on  this  great  national 
road,  then  the  only  avenue  of  traffic  between 
the  South  and  the  North.  Every  morning 
two  stage-coaches  with  prancing  horses  and 
shrill  horns  dashed  down  the  sleeping  streets 
to  the  wharf,  full  of  passengers  from  the  East, 
who  hurried  on  board  the  steamboats  bound 
for  St.  Louis  or  New  Orleans.  Huge  vans 
often  passed,   laden   with    merchandise  for 

[3] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

the  plantations  or  with  bales  of  cotton  for 
the  Northern  mills.  Now  and  then  a  white- 
topped  Conestoga  wagon  drawn  by  eight 
horses,  each  carrying  a  chime  of  bells,  came 
through  the  streets,  bearing  an  emigrant  fam- 
ily to  the  West.  The  mother  and  children 
peeped  out  of  the  high  front,  and  the  father, 
carrying  a  gun,  walked  with  his  dog.  These 
emigrants  often  were  from  Norway  or  Poland 
or  Germany,  and  wore  their  national  cos- 
tumes, as  European  peasants  still  did  then. 
They  put  on  their  velvet  jackets  and  high 
caps  when  they  came  near  the  town,  and 
went  about  begging,  in  order  to  save  the  lit- 
tle hoard  of  money  which  they  had  brought 
with  them  until  they  reached  "  the  Ohio,"  as 
the  whole  West  was  then  vaguely  called. 

These  wagons  were  full  of  romance  to  us 
children.  They  came  up  with  these  strange 
people  out  of  far-off  lands  of  mystery,  and  took 
them  into  the  wilderness,  full  of  raging  bears 
and  panthers  and  painted  warriors,  all  to  be 
fought  in  turn.  We  used  to  look  after  the 
children  peeping  out  at  us  with  bitter  envy; 
for,  naturally,   as  we   never  left  home,  the 

[4] 


In  the  Old  House 

world  outside  of  our  encircling  hills  was  a 
vast  secret  to  us.  Boys  and  girls  now  usu- 
ally rush  in  the  course  of  every  year  through 
a  dozen  states,  to  the  mountains  or  the  sea- 
coast.  Most  of  them  have  been  to  Europe. 
Every  morning  before  breakfast  they  can 
read  what  happened  yesterday  in  Korea  or 
South  Africa. 

But  with  us,  after  a  presidential  election, 
a  month  often  passed  before  the  man  on  a 
galloping  horse  brought  us  the  name  of  the 
successful  candidate. 

Honest  old  Timothy  Flint,  in  his  "  Account 
of  the  United  States,"  published  at  that  time, 
boasts  that  "  the  immense  number  of  fifteen 
hundred  newspapers  and  periodicals  are  now 
published  in  this  country."  Of  these  I  only 
remember  two,  the  "  United  States  Gazette  " 
and  the  "  Gentleman's  Monthly  Magazine," 
which  was  always  expurgated  for  my  use  by 
pinning  certain  pages  together. 

You  may  guess  from  these  hints  how  iso- 
lated and  calm  life  was  in  that  time.  The 
development  of  a  child  then  was  as  different 
a  process  from  the  same  work  now,  as  is  the 

[5] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

growth  of  an  acorn  which  falls  in  a  forest  and 
slowly  thrusts  out  its  root  and  leaf  into  earth 
and  sun,  from  the  culture  of  a  thousand  seed- 
lings massed  and  tended  in  a  hothouse. 

My  easy-going  generation  did  not  push  the 
world's  work  on  very  far  perhaps ;  we  did  not 
discover  wireless  telegraphy,  nor  radium.  But 
neither  did  we  die  of  nerve  prostration. 

Certain  things  were  close  and  real  to  us 
then,  as  children,  which  to  boys  and  girls 
now  are  misty  legends.  What  do  they  care 
for  the  Revolution  or  the  Indian  wars  ? 

But  then,  the  smoke  of  the  battles  of 
Monmouth  and  Yorktown  was  still  in  the  air. 
The  old  Indian  forts  were  still  standing  in 
the  streets.  It  was  part  of  your  religion  to 
hate  the  British.  It  was  your  own  grandfather 
who,  when  he  was  ten  years  old,  had  gone  into 
the  swamp,  killed  the  huge  beast  that  had 
threatened  the  settlement,  and  so  won  the 
proud  title  of  Panther  Jim.  He  showed  you 
the  very  sword  which  he  had  carried  at  Val- 
ley Forge.  It  was  your  own  grandmother 
who  had  danced  with  Lafayette,  and  who 
hinted  that  "  Lady  Washington  "  had  an  ugly 

[6] 


In  the  Old  House 

habit  of  loudly  scolding  her  husband  and  of 
boxing  Nelly  Custis's  ears,  which  was  hardly 
befitting  a  gentlewoman. 

These  things  made  you  feel  that  you  had 
rocked  the  cradle  of  the  new-born  nation  with 
your  own  hand.  It  was  your  duty  to  hate  the 
British. 

Another  odd  peculiarity  of  that  time,  which 
I  never  have  seen  noticed,  was  our  familiarity 
with  the  heathen  gods  and  goddesses.  If  you 
talked  of  war  you  said  Mars,  of  a  beautiful 
woman  you  called  her  Venus ;  you  accused 
your  rhyming  neighbor  of  "courting  the 
Nine."  Sermons,  letters,  and  ordinary  talk 
were  larded  with  scraps  of  Latin  and  Greek, 
which  now  would  be  laughed  at.  The  reason 
is  plain.  Then,  the  educated  boy  and  girl, 
first  of  all,  must  study  the  classics.  Science, 
geography,  even  the  history  of  their  own 
people,  were  but  secondary  matters.  Jupiter, 
Juno,  and  Caesar  still  held  the  stage.  The 
rest  of  the  world  as  yet  were  behind  the 
curtain. 

But  perhaps  if  I  tell  you  some  trifling  in- 
cidents of  my  own  childhood,  they  will  show 

[7] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

you  more  clearly  the  difference  between  life 
then  and  now.  These  little  happenings  are 
quite  true  except  in  the  names  of  persons  and 
places. 

The  house  in  which  we  children  lived  may 
have  seemed  very  plain  and  homely  to  other 
people,  but  it  had  certain  mysterious  pecu- 
liarities which  put  it,  for  us,  alongside  of 
Macbeth's  Castle  Glamis  or  the  witch-haunted 
stronghold  in  Sintram.  We  know  now  that 
they  were  not  mysteries,  but  they  still  give  a 
certain  significance  to  the  old  house  which 
was  then  the  background  of  our  lives. 

I  don't  remember  now  what  taxes  were 
paid  on  it,  nor  what  was  the  condition  of 
the  plumbing,  nor  even  how  many  chambers 
it  had  —  but  these  things  I  always  shall 
remember :  — 

In  each  room  was  a  huge  fire  of  bitumi- 
nous coal.  The  black  soot  hung  and  swayed 
in  the  great  chimneys  like  a  mass  of  sable 
mosses,  and,  beneath,  yellow  and  red  and 
purple  flames  leaped  up  from  an  inky  base 
of  coal  to  reach  them,  while  on  this  base, 
black  and  shining  as  jet,  was  a  gray  letter- 

[8] 


In  the  Old  House 

ing  that  incessantly  formed  itself  almost  into 
words  and  then  crumbled  away.  You  knew 
that  the  words,  if  you  could  read  them,  would 
tell  you  the  secret  of  your  life,  and  you  would 
watch  them  late  into  the  night,  until  you 
fell  asleep  and  woke  to  watch  again.  But 
the  words  always  crumbled  away  before  you 
could  read  them. 

These  flames  and  gray  ashes  have  burned 
always  in  my  memory,  and  made  the  wood- 
fires,  of  which  poets  talk  so  much,  seem  thin 
and  meaningless  to  me. 

Then  there  were  the  hillocks  in  the  garden, 
on  which  melons  grew  in  summer,  but  which, 
in  winter,  turned  into  the  Alps  sheeted  with 
glaciers.  We  always  "made  the  ascent"  just 
at  dusk,  equipped  with  alpenstocks  and  with 
bottles  of  spruce  beer  and  brown  jumbles. 
The  alpenstocks  and  the  cakes  and  the  beer 
all  were  made  with  her  own  hands  by  our 
good  Angel  (though  we  called  her  by  a  bet- 
ter name  than  that) :  it  was  She  who  packed 
the  cakes  and  little  bottles  into  bags  hung  to 
our  waists,  and  gave  us  our  staffs  and  shut 
us  out  into  the  twilight  to  make  our  perilous 

[9] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

journey,  setting  a  candle  in  the  window  to 
light  us  home  again  across  the  icy  mountain 
wastes. 

The  old  house  had  its  historic  points,  too. 
There  were  the  big  wooden  chairs  on  which 
the  three  Indian  chiefs  had  sat  when  they 
stopped  to  see  my  father  on  their  way  to 
Washington.  These  warriors  were  in  state 
dress,  their  faces  painted  in  scarlet  streaks ; 
they  wore  crowns  of  eagle  feathers  and  robes 
embroidered  with  beads  and  quills.  They 
were  live  horrors  to  remember  for  years, 
and  to  shiver  over  when  you  were  in  bed  and 
the  candles  were  out  and  you  pulled  the 
clothes  over  your  head. 

She  urged  us  to  come  and  welcome  them 
and  not  to  be  outdone  in  good-breeding  by 
savages.  So  we  went  into  the  room  and  sat 
on  a  row  of  chairs,  stiff  with  terror  when  they 
laughed  and  grunted  "  papoose."  One  of  us 
even  carried  a  plate  of  our  own  jumbles  to 
them,  and  the  big  warrior  dumped  cakes, 
plate  and  all,  into  the  corner  of  his  robe  and 
carried  them  away.  When  they  were  going 
they  turned  on  the  threshold  and  the  great 

[io] 


In  the  Old  House 

chief  made  a  farewell  speech.  The  meaning 
of  that  oration  always  remained  a  family- 
mystery.  Had  he  pronounced  a  curse  or  a 
blessing  on  us  ?  Even  at  this  late  day  I 
should  really  like  to  know  what  he  did 
say. 

Then  there  was  that  green  field  with  its 
old  trees  at  the  right  of  the  house  in  which 
—  Something  —  had  wailed  and  made  moans 
the  night  when  one  of  us  lay  dead.  The 
night  was  clear,  the  moon  being  full.  Every 
one  of  the  family  heard  the  strange  sobbing 
and  cries.  But  there  was  no  living  thing  in 
the  field,  —  nothing  but  the  voice.  No  stran- 
ger not  of  our  blood  heard  it. 

But  this  we  never  talked  of. 

But  of  all  the  mysteries  in  that  house  the 
most  real  was  Monsieur  Jean  Crapeaud. 

There  was  a  narrow  high  closet  cut  into 
the  side  of  the  dining-room  chimney,  of 
which  the  door  was  always  kept  locked. 
There  were  six  shelves  in  it.  On  the  lower 
three  were  medicines,  almanacs,  all  the  odds 
and  ends  of  an  orderly  housekeeper's  trea- 
sures ;  then  came  two  shelves,  empty,  because 

[»] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

they  were  too  high  for  even  grown  folks  to 
reach.  And  on  the  dark  upper  shelf  which 
nobody  could  touch  even  by  standing  on  the 
highest  chair  dwelt  Monsieur  Crapeaud. 

I  don't  know  who  first  told  us  of  him  or 
his  history.  We  seemed  to  have  known  him 
always.  He  was  an  old  nobleman,  and  had 
been  driven  out  of  France  by  Napoleon. 
Every  day  now  he  went  forth  for  adventures. 
We  were  sure  that  there  was  no  place  in  the 
world  where  fighting  was  going  on  that  Mon- 
sieur Jean  would  not  be  found,  in  full  armor, 
mounted  on  a  gray  steed,  carrying  a  drawn 
sword  and  a  banner  blazoned  with  the  lilies 
of  France.  But  at  night  he  always  came 
home  to  his  quarters  on  the  top  shelf.  That 
was,  of  course,  only  the  entrance  to  his  cita- 
del. Who  could  tell  how  many  gilded  salons 
and  high  towers  and  dungeons  for  his  ene- 
mies he  had  there,  back  of  the  chimney  ? 
He  was,  we  believed,  but  twelve  inches  high, 
and  we  saw  no  difficulty  in  his  entertaining 
many  guests  in  his  small  quarters.  Naturally, 
the  size  of  these  nobles  of  France  —  emigres 
—  would  have  shrunken  with  their  fortunes. 

[12] 


In  the  Old  House 

Barbara,  our  nurse,  boasted  that  she  had 
often  seen  them,  and  described  them  as  per- 
petually busy  with  eating  frogs'  legs  and 
smoking  corn-cob  pipes.  We  said  nothing, 
but  secretly  we  did  not  believe  Barbara's 
story.  That  statement  about  cob  pipes  such 
as  the  negroes  smoked  lacked  common-sense. 
We  could  not  be  taken  in  by  it. 

When  we  had  anything  especially  good  to 
eat,  such  as  taffy  or  black  cake,  we  would 
throw  bits  of  it  up  to  the  upper  shelf,  and 
when  the  evening  readings  touched  on  wars 
or  deeds  of  derring-do,  we  opened  the  closet 
door  that  Monsieur  Jean  might  hear.  I  re- 
member that  in  the  midst  of  the  great  tourna- 
ment in  "  Ivanhoe  "  somebody  gasped  in  a 
whisper,  "  Maybe  he  was  there ! "  The  idea 
was  so  tremendous  that  we  had  to  stop  read- 
ing that  night  to  think  it  over. 

Nobody  had  ever  seen  Jean,  and  there  was 
only  one  person  in  the  house  to  whom  he 
would  speak.  It  was  very  seldom  that  we  could 
persuade  this  friend  of  the  exiled  nobleman  to 
seek  an  audience.  When  he  consented,  how 
our  hearts  throbbed  and  our  feet  grew  cold  as 

[13] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

he  would  rise,  lay  down  his  cigar,  and  gravely 
unlock  the  closet  door. 

Three  little  taps.   "  Monsieur ! " 

Silence.  Other  taps.  "  Monsieur,  will  you 
permit  the  children  to  bid  you  good-evening  ?  " 

"  Oui  —  oui !  "  in  a  shrill  little  voice,  thin 
and  sharp  as  the  stab  of  a  penknife.  It  came 
from  the  closet,  from  the  floor,  from  the  open 
window,  and  our  blood  ran  cold  as  we  listened. 

"What  would  they  ask  of  poor  Jean  Cra- 
peaud  ? " 

"  Go  on.  Speak !  "  the  interpreter  would  say, 
nodding  solemnly  to  us. 

That  was  the  awful  moment! 

Usually  the  boldest  boy  would  gasp, "  Where 
did  you  fight  to-day,  General  ?  " 

Sometimes  the  answer  was  "  With  the  In- 
dians," or  "  Against  the  Turks,"  or,  most  blood- 
curdling of  all,  "  In  Africa,  with  lions."  But  he 
always  quickly  added :  "  I  am  tired  now  with 
the  fight.  I  go  to  sleep.  Bon  soir,  mes  enfants  " 
—  the  shrill  pipe  of  a  voice  retreating  up  and 
up  into  the  air. 

"  Bon  soir,  Monsieur,"  we  would  shout  in 
chorus.    Oh,  the  fearful  joy  and  relief  as  the 

[H] 


In  the  Old  House 

last  thin  "  Adieu  "  died  out  and  the  interpreter 
locked  the  door,  invariably  coughing  violently. 

I  see  now  that  the  village  was  a  picturesque 
old  place.  On  a  bluff  by  the  river  were  the  ruins 
of  the  fort  in  which  the  first  settlers  took  shel- 
ter from  the  Indians.  One  of  these  first  set- 
tlers was  still  living,  long  past  eighty,  and  each 
year  used  to  give  a  ball  in  his  barnlike  house, 
when  he  would  appear  in  an  old  Continental 
uniform  and  bare  feet.  The  descendants  of 
these  old  hunters  and  surveyors  then  made  up 
the  rich  class  of  most  of  the  settlements.  The 
pay  of  a  surveyor  in  Washington's  day  usually 
was  as  much  land  as  he  could  ride  around  in 
a  given  time.  During  the  first  century  land 
appreciated  rapidly  in  value.  Many  of  the  most 
influential  families  in  the  South  and  Middle 
West  to-day  might  adopt  a  galloping  pony  as 
their  crest  with  accuracy. 

In  some  of  our  old  houses  lived  quiet  folk, 
who  frowned  upon  balls  and  card  parties. 
In  each  of  their  households  were  a  few  slaves, 
some  family  portraits  and  plate,  a  shelf  or  two 
of  Latin  and  English  classics  —  and  very  little 
money.  The  owners  stood  as  serenely  secure 

[«5] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

on  their  pedigree  as  though  they  traced  their 
blood  back  through  nobles  of  Castile  for  fifty 
generations.  They  had  a  fine  simplicity  and 
gentleness  of  speech  which  I  remember  as 
I  do  songs  heard  in  my  childhood.  Father 
Vaughan,  the  Catholic  priest,  was  one  of  them, 
and  Doctor  Morris,  the  old  Episcopal  minis- 
ter, who  christened  and  married  and  buried  us 
all  —  was  another.  The  two  men  used  to  meet 
sometimes  in  our  house,  but  they  were  formal 
and  stately  to  each  other  as  to  nobody  else,  and 
neither  man  ever  spoke  of  religion  when  the 
other  was  by. 

In  the  largest  of  the  old  houses  lived  Colonel 
Richard  Stuart.  The  colonel  was  the  only  man 
I  ever  saw  who  wore  knee  breeches  and  a  queue. 
Mistress  Stuart,  too,  when  she  came  to  drink 
tea  with  us,  wore  a  velvet  gown  with  ruby  but- 
tons, and  a  lawn  turban  folded  above  her  whiter 
hair.  They  were  a  most  simple-minded,  gentle 
old  couple,  and,  being  childless,  were  happy 
when  we  visited  them,  and  they  could  stuff  us 
with  plum-cake  and  syllabub.  Yet  we  always 
felt  that  they  were  not  quite  real  human  beings, 
but  had  come  down  from  that  far-off  age  where 
[16] 


In  the  Old  House 

everything  was  old,  where  George  Washington 
was  the  father  of  his  country  and  Elijah  was 
carried  off  to  heaven  in  a  fiery  chariot. 

Suddenly  a  mysterious  disaster  befell  the  old 
people.  It  never  was  explained  to  us.  Even 
now  I  can  but  guess  at  the  facts. 

There  was  in  the  village  a  certain  Squire 
Hiram  McCall,  our  one  man  of  business. 
The  town  was  proud  of  him.  We  children 
used  to  hear  men  boast  that  "  Hiram  was 
a  financier  known  from  New  York  to  St. 
Louis."  "  Hiram  could  hold  his  own  on  any 
exchange  in  the  country."  He  was  a  loud- 
voiced,  hook-nosed,  keen-eyed  man.  We  knew 
that  he  had  a  Bank  and  Capital.  We  used  to 
hear  him  bragging  on  the  street  corners  of 
his  plans  to  make  his  fellow  citizens  rich.  He 
never  spoke  to  us,  but  would  stumble  over  us 
and  push  us  out  of  his  way. 

One  day  the  whole  town  whispered  to- 
gether as  at  a  funeral.  Many  of  the  women 
cried.  We  listened,  of  course,  wherever  we 
could.  Some  of  the  men  we  found  "  had  gone 
on  McCall's  paper  "  —  whatever  that  might 
be  —  "  and  were  ruined.    But  the  ruin  of  old 

[17] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Dick  Stuart,"  they  said,  "  was  the  most  com- 
plete of  all." 

We  hurried  at  once  to  the  Stuart  place 
and  peeped  through  the  fence.  What  was 
ruin  ?  Were  our  old  friends  dead  ?  No,  there 
they  were  on  the  porch,  and  my  mother  was 
with  them.  Her  face  was  pale  and  her  eyes 
burned.  She  was  urging  them  to  take  the 
benefit  of  some  bankrupt  law  which  Henry 
Clay  had  made  for  the  help  of  poor  debtors. 

"  Are  you  to  starve  in  your  old  age,"  we 
heard  her  say,  "to  pay  the  debts  of  that 
villain  ? " 

"  I  signed  my  name.  I  gave  my  word,"  was 
all  that  the  old  man  said. 

We  thought  it  wiser  to  go  home.  She 
might  look  at  the  fence.  But  we  were  satis- 
fied. If  she  and  Henry  Clay  had  taken  the 
matter  in  hand  it  was  all  right. 

There  is  a  blur  of  time.  Then  came  a  day 
of  horror.  The  Stuarts  had  nothing.  The 
old  man  gave  up  houses,  money,  land  —  all ; 
there  was  a  terrible  rumor  that  even  the  vel- 
vet gowns  and  ruby  buttons  were  sent  to 
Philadelphia  and  sold. 

[18] 


In  the  Old  House 

The  story  was  told  to  us  a  hundred  times. 
"  You  must  understand,"  she  said,  the  tears 
in  her  eyes.  "  The  Colonel  is  penniless  and 
homeless.  But  he  has  kept  his  honor !  "  She 
urged  us  to  take  this  thing  to  heart  and  when 
we  were  grown  up  to  go  and  do  likewise. 

I  don't  think  the  lesson  struck  home. 
Honor,  with  no  house,  nor  plum-cake,  nor 
knee-breeches,  looks  mean  and  cold  when 
one  is  nine  years  old.  Later  we  heard  that 
the  Colonel  had  asked  for,  and  been  given, 
the  post  of  toll-gate  keeper  on  the  turnpike, 
and  was  actually  there,  taking  the  tolls. 

For  years  after  that,  on  every  fair  Sunday 
afternoon  we  were  dressed  and  taken  to  the 
toll-house  to  "  pay  our  respects."  There  was 
always  a  certain  solemnity  in  the  visit,  some- 
thing like  a  presentation  at  court.  The  whole 
town  delighted  to  honor  the  old  people.  You 
always  found  some  of  their  friends  on  the 
vine-covered  little  porch,  where  Mistress 
Stuart  sat  in  her  soft  gray  gown.  There  was 
no  lawn  turban  now  to  hide  her  white  hair. 
But  the  Colonel  still  wore  his  knee-breeches 
and  queue.   This  comforted  us  greatly.    The 

[19] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

toll-gate  was  on  a  lonely  mountain  road. 
Hours  might  pass  before  a  wagon  or  horse- 
man would  be  seen  coming  up  out  of  the  fog. 
But  then  it  was  a  fine  sight  to  see  the  Colonel 
lay  down  his  pipe,  step  solemnly  out  on  the 
road,  and  taking  off  his  hat  pass  the  time  of 
day  with  the  traveler,  while  the  "  levy "  or 
"  fip  "  was  handed  to  him. 

His  story  was  known  throughout  that  part 
of  Virginia  and  great  reverence  was  shown 
by  all  passers-by  to  the  old  gate-keeper. 

Another  figure  belonging  to  our  first  days 
in  the  world  was  "  Knocky-luft."  I  heard, 
forty  years  later,  that  her  real  name  was 
Cathy  Warren,  and  that  long  before  I  was 
born  she  had  come  from  County  Cork  with 
her  boy  Jim  to  seek  their  fortune  here.  Jim 
went  on  to  the  West  and  his  mother  waited 
in  our  village  for  him  to  come  back  with  the 
fortune.  I  remember  her  chubby  face  and  blue 
eyes  often  bent  greedily  over  some  new  gown 
or  hat  of  my  mother's.  "  Ah-h  !  "  she  would 
mutter,  with  breathless  delight.  "  I  do  be 
thinkin'  Jim  would  be  cravin'  the  like  for 
his  old    Knocky-luft  when   he   comes  back 

[20] 


In  the  Old  House 

wid  his  big  bags  of  goold !  He  's  such  a  fool 
boy!" 

Jim  wrote  one  day  that  he  was  "  pushin'  on 
to  the  Rockies  and  would  write  again  when 
he  came  back." 

Long  before  our  childhood  Knocky  was 
waiting  for  that  letter.  Still  waiting,  she  grew, 
as  the  years  went  by,  into  a  lean,  yellow  old 
woman,  with  a  red  nose  and  hungry,  fright- 
ened eyes.  Every  day  she  stopped  at  the 
house  on  her  way  down  the  street. 

"  Where  are  you  going,  Knocky  ?  "  we  al- 
ways cried. 

"  To  the  po  —  stoffis,  children,"  she  would 
say,  with  dignity.  "  There  '11  be  a  letter  to-day 
from  my  son  James,  I  'm  thinkin'." 

We  used  to  watch  for  her  at  the  garden 
gate  as  she  crept  back  again,  to  comfort  her 
with  a  plate  of  good  things  saved  from  the 
midday  meal.  If  we  could  show  her,  too,  a 
gay  gown  or  bit  of  finery  the  cure  was  com- 
plete. She  would  turn  it  over  and  over  eagerly 
shaking  her  head,  muttering :  "  I  doubt  I  'm 
too  old  —  I  don't  want  to  be  redickelous.  But 
Jim  '11  be  havin'  his  own  way !     He  allays 

[21] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

called  me  his  pretty  Knock."  Then  she  would 
go  away,  cheerfully  calling  out  that  we  would 
see  her  in  the  morning. 

As  years  went  by  she  grew  more  lean  and 
gray  and  silent.  At  last  she  gave  up  work  al- 
together. Nobody  dared  to  offer  her  alms.  I 
remember  the  shudder  that  went  through  the 
family  when  we  heard  that  she  had  left  her 
snug  little  room  and  was  living  in  a  hut  on 
the  Commons.  We  knew  now  that  she  had 
given  up  hope  and  had  gone  out  there  to  die. 

The  Commons  was  the  plague  spot  of  the 
village,  a  collection  of  wretched  cabins  ten- 
anted by  drunken  free  negroes  and  Irish. 
Among  its  other  horrors  were  goats  and  jim- 
son  weeds  and  a  foul  pond  covered  with  yellow 
slime. 

Knocky-luft  found  shelter  in  one  of  these 
hovels.  Never  by  a  word  did  she  hint  that 
her  hope  was  gone,  or  that  she  had  lost  faith 
in  Jim. 

Every  morning  she  crept  down  to  the  post- 
office  and  back  again.  There  was  a  certain 
drunken  old  hag  known  in  the  village  as 
Widdy  Kate,  who  sometimes   followed  her 

[  «  ] 


In  the  Old  House 

with  jeers,  desiring  to  know  whether  "  her 
ladyship's  son  was  coming  to-day  in  his  char- 
yut  an'  six  ?  " 

Knocky  took  refuge  from  her  in  our  gar- 
den one  day.  "  To  think,  childher,"  she  cried, 
"  that  I  've  sunk  down  to  livin'  in  the  same 
house  wid  Widdy  Kate !  Only  she  has  the 
big  room  an'  I  hev  the  kitchen  !  " 

How  could  we  comfort  such  misery  as  that? 
It  was  raining.  We  dragged  her  into  the 
house  and  showed  her  my  new  frock  of  nan- 
kin embroidered  in  linen  floss.  That  was  com- 
forting, and  when  we  reached  the  pantry  and 
displayed  a  row  of  smoking  mince  pies  — 
Knocky  was  laughing. 

It  was  Thanksgiving  Day. 

We  tried  to  make  this  clear  to  Knocky, 
with  the  pies,  real  and  smoking,  in  sight.  But 
she  grew  restless  again. 

"  What  for  shud  /be  thankin'  God?  "  she 
cried.  "  Christmas  I  know,  an'  the  battle  of 
N-Yorleens,  an'  the  Fourth  of  July  I  know. 
But  I  can't  be  givin'  thanks  —  I  '11  go  home, 
childher.    No,  I  want  no  dinner." 

She  would  not  even  take  a  pie.    We  tried 

[23] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

to  hold  her  back,  but  she  shook  us  off  and 
went  down  the  street  under  the  dripping  trees 
again,  back  to  her  home  with  Kate.  We  were 
still,  I  remember,  at  the  window  looking  mis- 
erably out  at  the  rain  when  my  mother  came 
up  the  path.  She  was  very  pale  and  she  held 
something  white  in  her  hand. 

"  Is  Knocky  here  ?  "  she  said.  "  It  is  the 
letter  from  Jim." 

"Jim  "  came  that  afternoon.  He  was  a  stout, 
oldish  man,  with  a  worn  face  but  kind  eyes. 
He  was  handsomely  dressed,  and  stated  to 
my  father  that  he  had  grown  rich  in  the 
West  and  had  come  to  take  his  mother  home. 
"  I  '11  make  her  happy ! "  he  said.  Why  he 
had  not  come  before  I  do  not  know  to  this 
day. 

Feeling  that  the  Commons  was  the  centre 
of  public  interest,  we  found  our  way  there  in 
the  afternoon,  braving  the  terrors  of  Widdy 
Kate  and  the  butting  billy-goats.  Knocky 
saw  us  far  off.  "  Come  in,  childher !  "  she 
called.  "  Come  in.  It 's  Jim !  I  mean  it 's 
my  son,  Mr."  — 

She  stopped  and  looked  at  him.   She  was 

[=4] 


In  the  Old  House 

frightened,  uncertain.  He  stroked  her  hand 
gently,  humoring  her  like  a  baby. 

"  Yes,  it 's  Jim.  I  came  a  little  while  ago, 
you  know,  mother." 

Knocky  started  up.  "  Look  at  my  gown, 
childher !  Silk,  d'  ye  see,  as  ud  stan'  alone ! 
Jim  had  it  made  up  in  the  latest  fashion. 
An'  the  lace  in  the  bosom,  d'  ye  see  ?  An' 
flowin'  sleeves  !    An'  the  goold  watch  !  " 

"  I  thought  she  'd  be  pleased,"  he  said 
awkwardly,  looking  at  us. 

"  I  '11  tell  ye  what  '11  plaze  me  !  "  she  cried 
shrilly.  "  If  you  '11  go  out  I  '11  put  them  all  on. 
An'  Jim  '11  get  a  carriage  —  an  open  phayton 
like  a  charyut  an'  two  horses  an'  we  '11  drive 
past  Widdy  Kate's  dure  through  the  streets  to 
the  Travelers'  Inn,  an'  we  '11  take  dinner  there ! " 

"  Very  well,  mother,"  said  her  son,  watching 
her  uneasily. 

"You've  got  enough  money?  None  but 
rich  folks  can  dine  at  the  Travelers'  Inn. 
They  drink  wine  for  dinner.  Can  we  have 
wine  ?  An'  you  '11  drive  slow  through  the 
streets.  Past  the  po  —  stoffis !  I  want  to  stop 
an'  tell  them  that  my  letter 's  come !  " 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Jim  came  out  with  us  and  shut  the  door. 
We  took  time  to  notice  that  he  looked 
white  and  sick  and  that  Widdy  Kate  was 
waiting  with  all  the  other  neighbors  at  the 
pond,  and  then  we  scurried  home  to  tell  the 
news. 

An  hour  later  we  saw  the  phaeton  making 
its  triumphal  way  down  the  street.  The  sun 
had  come  out  and  shone  on  the  wet  trees. 

Suddenly  the  horses  stopped.  Jim  jumped 
out  of  the  phaeton  and  lifted  Knocky-luft  in 
his  arms.    He  carried  her  into  a  house. 

"  She  is  not  well !  "  he  cried.  "  Where  is  a 
doctor ! " 

In  a  minute  she  was  lying  on  a  couch 
and  they  were  rubbing  her  hands,  and  I  was 
running  for  old  Doctor  Tanner,  whose  shop 
(with  the  terrible  skeleton)  was  at  the  back 
of  our  garden. 

Then  everybody  knew  and  came.  When 
they  saw  Knocky  the  men  took  off  their  hats 
and  the  women  cried  and  went  out  again. 
Doctor  Morris,  our  old  minister,  came  up  the 
path,  thinking  that  he  was  needed,  but  seeing 
who  it  was  he  ran  to  find  Father  Vaughan. 

[26] 


In  the  Old  House 

"  It  is  you  who  is  wanted,"  he  cried.  "  Go  — 
make  haste ! " 

All  this  time  Knocky  was  looking  at  Jim. 
When  I  saw  her  eyes  I  thought,  "  She  knows 
him  now ! " 

"  Dear  boy  !  "  she  whispered,  "  you  've 
come ! " 

He  was  holding  her  in  his  arms.  Presently 
he  kissed  her  and  laid  her  down. 

"  I  came  too  late,"  he  said,  and  went  out  to 
another  room. 


[27] 


II 

BOSTON   IN  THE   SIXTIES 

In  the  garden  of  our  old  house  there  were 
some  huge  cherry-trees,  with  low  growing 
branches,  and  in  one  of  them  our  nurse,  Bar- 
bara, having  an  architectural  turn  of  mind, 
once  built  me  a  house.  Really,  even  now,  old 
as  I  am,  and  after  I  have  seen  St.  James's 
and  the  Vatican,  I  can't  imagine  any  house 
as  satisfactory  as  Barbara's. 

You  went  up  as  far  as  you  could  by  a 
ladder  to  the  dizzy  height  of  twelve  feet,  and 
then  you  kicked  the  ladder  down  and  climbed 
on,  up  and  up,  breathless  with  terror  and 
triumph,  and  —  there  it  was.  All  your  own. 
Not  a  boy  had  ever  heard  of  it.  There  was  a 
plank  nailed  in  for  the  floor  and  another  for 
a  seat,  and  there  was  a  secret  box  with  a  lid. 
You  could  hide  your  baby  in  that  box,  if 
there  were  danger  of  an  attack  by  the  In- 
dians, or  you  could  store  your  provisions  in 

[28] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

it  in  case  you  had  been  on  a  long  journey 
in  the  wilderness,  and  had  gained  this  refuge 
from  the  wolves  in  the  jungle  of  currant 
bushes  below.  All  around  you,  above  and 
below,  were  the  thick  wall  of  green  leaves 
and  the  red  cherries.  They  were  useful,  in 
case  there  was  danger  of  starving  when  the 
siege  by  the  redskins  or  wild  beasts  lasted 
long. 

After  I  had  grown  old  enough  to  be 
ashamed  of  my  dolls,  or  of  looking  for  wolves 
in  the  currant  bushes,- 1  used  to  carry  my  two 
or  three  books  up  to  the  tree-house.  There 
were  but  two  or  three  books  then  for  chil- 
dren ;  no  magazines,  nor  Kiplings,  nor  Ste- 
vensons,  nor  any  of  the  army  of  cheery  story- 
tellers who  beset  the  young  people  to-day; 
only  Bunyan  and  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Sir 
Walter. 

Still,  when  Apollyon  roared  in  the  celery 
pits  below,  and  Mercy  and  Christiana  sat 
under  the  locust-trees,  and  the  tents  and 
glittering  legions  of  the  crusaders  stretched 
away  to  the  hills,  I  don't  know  that  any  girl 
now,  in  a  proper  modern  house,  has  better 

[29] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

company  than  was  mine  up  in  Barbara's 
lodge. 

One  day  I  climbed  up  with  a  new  book, 
the  first  cheap  book,  by  the  way,  that  I  ever 
saw.  It  was  in  two  volumes ;  the  cover  was 
of  yellow  paper  and  the  name  was  "  Moral 
Tales."  The  tales,  for  the  most  part,  were 
thin  and  cheap  as  the  paper ;  they  com- 
manded no  enchanted  company,  bad  or  good, 
into  the  cherry-tree. 

But  among  them  were  two  or  three  un- 
signed stories  which  I  read  over  so  often 
that  I  almost  know  every  line  of  them  by 
heart  now.  One  was  a  story  told  by  a  town- 
pump,  and  another  the  account  of  the  ram- 
bles of  a  little  girl  like  myself,  and  still 
another  a  description  of  a  Sunday  morning 
in  a  quiet  town  like  our  sleepy  village.  There 
was  no  talk  of  enchantment  in  them.  But 
in  these  papers  the  commonplace  folk  and 
things  which  I  saw  every  day  took  on  a  sud- 
den mystery  and  charm,  and,  for  the  first  time, 
I  found  that  they,  too,  belonged  to  the  magic 
world  of  knights  and  pilgrims  and  fiends. 

The  publisher  of  "  Moral  Tales,"  whoever 

[30] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

he  was,  had  probably  stolen  these  anonymous 
papers  from  the  annuals  in  which  they  had 
appeared.  Nobody  called  him  to  account. 
Their  author  was  then,  as  he  tells  us  some- 
where, the  "obscurest  man  of  letters  in 
America." 

Years  afterward,  when  he  was  known  as 
the  greatest  of  living  romancers,  I  opened 
his  "  Twice-Told  Tales  "  and  found  there  my 
old  friends  with  a  shock  of  delight  as  keen 
as  if  I  had  met  one  of  my  own  kinsfolk  in  the 
streets  of  a  foreign  city.  In  the  first  heat  of 
my  discovery  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Hawthorne  and 
told  him  about  Barbara's  house  and  of  what 
he  had  done  for  the  child  who  used  to  hide 
there.  The  little  story,  coming  from  the 
backwoods,  touched  his  fancy,  I  suppose,  for 
I  presently  received  a  note  from  him  saying 
that  he  was  then  at  Washington,  and  was 
coming  on  to  Harper's  Ferry,  where  John 
Brown  had  died,  and  still  farther  to  see  the 
cherry-trees  and  —  me. 

Me. 

Well,  I  suppose  Esther  felt  a  little  in  that 
way  when  the  king's  sceptre  touched  her. 

[31] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

I  wish  he  had  come  to  the  old  town.  It 
would  have  seemed  a  different  place  forever 
after  to  many  people.  But  we  were  in  the 
midst  of  the  Civil  War,  and  the  western  end 
of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  was  seized 
just  then  by  the  Confederates,  and  he  turned 
back. 

A  year  later  I  saw  him.  It  was  during  my 
first  visit  to  New  England,  at  the  time  when 
certain  men  and  women  were  earning  for 
Boston  its  claim  to  be  called  the  modern 
Athens. 

I  wish  I  could  summon  these  memorable 
ghosts  before  you  as  I  saw  them  then  and 
afterward.  To  the  eyes  of  an  observer,  be- 
longing to  the  commonplace  world,  they  did 
not  appear  precisely  as  they  do  in  the  por- 
traits drawn  of  them  for  posterity  by  their 
companions,  the  other  Areopagites,  who 
walked  and  talked  with  them  apart  —  always 
apart  from  humanity.  , 

That  was  the  first  peculiarity  which  struck 
an  outsider  in  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  and  the 
other  members  of  the  "  Atlantic  "  coterie ;  that 
while  they  thought   they  were  guiding   the 

[32] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

real  world,  they  stood  quite  outside  of  it,  and 
never  would  see  it  as  it  was. 

For  instance,  during  the  Civil  War,  they 
had  much  to  say  of  it,  and  all  used  the  same 
strained  high  note  of  exaltation.  It  was  to 
them  "only  the  shining  track,"  as  Lowell 
calls  it,  where 

"  heroes  mustered  in  a  gleaming  row, 
Beautiful  evermore,  and  with  the  rays 
Of  morn  on  their  white  shields  of  expectation." 

These  heroes  were  their  bravest  and  their 
best,  gone  to  die  for  the  slave  or  for  their 
country.    They  were  "  the  army  "  to  them. 

I  remember  listening  during  one  long  sum- 
mer morning  to  Louisa  Alcott's  father  as 
he  chanted  paeans  to  the  war,  the  "  armed 
angel  which  was  wakening  the  nation  to  a 
lofty  life  unknown  before." 

We  were  in  the  little  parlor  of  the  Way- 
side, Mr.  Hawthorne's  house  in  Concord.  Mr. 
Alcott  stood  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  his  long 
gray  hair  streaming  over  his  collar,  his  pale 
eyes  turning  quickly  from  one  listener  to  an- 
other to  hold  them  quiet,  his  hands  waving 
to   keep    time  with    the  orotund   sentences 

[33] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

which  had  a  stale,  familiar  ring  as  if  often  re- 
peated before.  Mr.  Emerson  stood  listening, 
his  head  sunk  on  his  breast,  with  profound 
submissive  attention,  but  Hawthorne  sat 
astride  of  a  chair,  his  arms  folded  on  the  back, 
his  chin  dropped  on  them,  and  his  laughing, 
sagacious  eyes  watching  us,  full  of  mockery. 

I  had  just  come  up  from  the  border  where 
I  had  seen  the  actual  war ;  the  filthy  spew- 
ings  of  it;  the  political  jobbery  in  Union  and 
Confederate  camps;  the  malignant  personal 
hatreds  wearing  patriotic  masks,  and  glutted 
by  burning  homes  and  outraged  women ;  the 
chances  in  it,  well  improved  on  both  sides, 
for  brutish  men  to  grow  more  brutish,  and 
for  honorable  gentlemen  to  degenerate  into 
thieves  and  sots.  War  may  be  an  armed  angel 
with  a  mission,  but  she  has  the  personal  habits 
of  the  slums.  This  would-be  seer  who  was 
talking  of  it,  and  the  real  seer  who  listened, 
knew  no  more  of  war  as  it  was,  than  I  had 
done  in  my  cherry-tree  when  L  dreamed  of 
bannered  legions  of  crusaders  debouching  in 
the  misty  fields. 

Mr.  Hawthorne  at  last  gathered  himself  up 

[34] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

lazily  to  his  feet,  and  said  quietly  :  "  We  can- 
not see  that  thing  at  so  long  a  range.  Let 
us  go  to  dinner,"  and  Mr.  Alcott  suddenly 
checked  the  droning  flow  of  his  prophecy  and 
quickly  led  the  way  to  the  dining-room. 

Early  that  morning  when  his  lank,  gray 
figure  had  first  appeared  at  the  gate,  Mr. 
Hawthorne  said :  "  Here  comes  the  Sage  of 
Concord.  He  is  anxious  to  know  what  kind 
of  human  beings  come  up  from  the  back  hills 
in  Virginia.  Now  I  will  tell  you,"  his  eyes 
gleaming  with  fun,  "  what  he  will  talk  to  you 
about.  Pears.  Yes.  You  may  begin  at  Plato 
or  the  day's  news,  and  he  will  come  around  to 
pears.  He  is  now  convinced  that  a  vegetable 
diet  affects  both  the  body  and  soul,  and  that 
pears  exercise  a  more  direct  and  ennobling 
influence  on  us  than  any  other  vegetable  or 
fruit.   Wait.   You  '11  hear  presently." 

When  we  went  in  to  dinner,  therefore,  I 
was  surprised  to  see  the  sage  eat  heartily  of 
the  fine  sirloin  of  beef  set  before  us.  But 
with  the  dessert  he  began  to  advocate  a  vege- 
table diet  and  at  last  announced  the  spiritual 
influence  of  pears,  to  the  great  delight  of  his 

[  35  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

host,  who  laughed  like  a  boy  and  was  humored 
like  one  by  the  gentle  old  man. 

Whether  Alcott,  Emerson,  and  their  dis- 
ciples discussed  pears  or  the  war,  their  views 
gave  you  the  same  sense  of  unreality,  of  hav- 
ing been  taken,  as  Hawthorne  said,  at  too 
long  a  range.  You  heard  much  sound  philo- 
sophy and  many  sublime  guesses  at  the  eter- 
nal verities ;  in  fact,  never  were  the  eternal 
verities  so  dissected  and  pawed  over  and 
turned  inside  out  as  they  were  about  that 
time,  in  Boston,  by  Margaret  Fuller  and  her 
successors.  But  the  discussion  left  you  with 
a  vague,  uneasy  sense  that  something  was 
lacking,  some  back-bone  of  fact.  Their  theo- 
ries were  like  beautiful  bubbles  blown  from 
a  child's  pipe,  floating  overhead,  with  queer 
reflections  on  them  of  sky  and  earth  and  hu- 
man beings,  all  in  a  glow  of  fairy  color  and 
all  a  little  distorted. 

Mr.  Alcott  once  showed  me  an  arbor  which 
he  had  built  with  great  pains  and  skill  for 
Mr.  Emerson  to  "  do  his  thinking  in."  It  was 
made  of  unbarked  saplings  and  boughs,  a  tiny 
round  temple,  two  storied,  with  chambers  in 

[36] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

which  were  seats,  a  desk,  etc.,  all  very  artistic 
and  complete,  except  that  he  had  forgotten 
to  make  any  door.  You  could  look  at  it  and 
admire  it,  but  nobody  could  go  in  or  use  it. 
It  seemed  to  me  a  fitting  symbol  for  this 
guild  of  prophets  and  their  scheme  of  life. 

Mr.  Alcott  at  that  time  was  their  oracle, 
appointed  and  held  in  authority  by  Emerson 
alone.  His  faith  in  the  old  man  was  so  sin- 
cere and  simple  that  it  was  almost  painful 
to  see  it. 

He  once  told  me,  "  I  asked  Alcott  the 
other  day  what  he  would  do  when  he  came  to 
the  gate,  and  St.  Peter  demanded  his  ticket. 
1  What  have  you  to  show  to  justify  your  right 
to  live  ? '  I  said.  '  Where  is  your  book,  your 
picture?  You  have  done  nothing  in  the 
world.'  '  No,'  he  said,  '  but  somewhere  on  a 
hill  up  there  will  be  Plato  and  Paul  and 
Socrates  talking,  and  they  will  say :  "  Send 
Alcott  over  here,  we  want  him  with  us." ' 
And,"  said  Emerson,  gravely  shaking  his 
head,  "  he  was  right !  Alcott  was  right." 

Mr.  Alcott  was  a  tall,  awkward,  kindly  old 
man,  absolutely  ignorant  of   the  world,  but 

[37] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

with  an  obstinate  faith  in  himself  which 
would  have  befitted  a  pagan  god.  Hearing 
that  I  was  from  Virginia,  he  told  me  that  he 
owed  his  education  wholly  to  Virginian  plant- 
ers. He  had  traveled  in  his  youth  as  a  peddler 
through  the  State,  and  finding  how  eager  he 
was  to  learn  they  would  keep  him  for  days 
in  their  houses,  turning  him  loose  in  their 
libraries. 

His  own  library  was  full  of  folios  of  his 
manuscripts.  He  had  covered  miles  of  paper 
with  his  inspirations,  but  when  I  first  knew 
him  no  publisher  had  ever  put  a  line  of  them 
into  print.  His  house  was  bleak  and  bitter 
cold  with  poverty,  his  wife  had  always  worked 
hard  to  feed  him  and  his  children.  In  any 
other  town  he  would  have  been  more  re- 
spected if  he  had  tried  to  put  his  poor  car- 
pentering skill  to  use  to  support  them.  But 
the  homelier  virtues  were  not,  apparently,  in 
vogue  in  Concord. 

During  my  first  visit  to  Boston  in  1862,  I 
saw  at  an  evening  reception  a  tall,  thin  young 
woman  standing  alone  in  a  corner.  She  was 
plainly  dressed,  and  had  that  watchful,  defiant 

[38] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

air  with  which  the  woman  whose  youth  is 
slipping  away  is  apt  to  face  the  world  which 
has  offered  no  place  to  her.  Presently  she 
came  up  to  me. 

"  These  people  may  say  pleasant  things  to 
you,"  she  said  abruptly ;  "  but  not  one  of 
them  would  have  gone  to  Concord  and  back 
to  see  you,  as  I  did  to-day.  I  went  for  this 
gown.  It 's  the  only  decent  one  I  have.  I  'm 
very  poor ;  "  and  in  the  next  breath  she  con- 
trived to  tell  me  that  she  had  once  taken  a 
place  as  "  second  girl."  "  My  name,"  she 
added,  "  is  Louisa  Alcott." 

Now,  although  we  had  never  met,  Louisa 
Alcott  had  shown  me  great  kindness  in  the 
winter  just  past,  sacrificing  a  whole  day  to  a 
tedious  work  which  was  to  give  me  pleasure 
at  a  time  when  every  hour  counted  largely 
to  her  in  her  desperate  struggle  to  keep  her 
family  from  want.  The  little  act  was  so  con- 
siderate and  fine,  that  I  am  still  grateful  for 
it,  now  when  I  am  an  old  woman,  and  Louisa 
Alcott  has  long  been  dead.  It  was  as  natural 
for  her  to  do  such  things  as  for  a  pome- 
granate-tree to  bear  fruit. 

[39] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Before  I  met  her  I  had  known  many  wo- 
men and  girls  who  were  fighting  with  poverty 
and  loneliness,  wondering  why  God  had  sent 
them  into  a  life  where  apparently  there  was 
no  place  for  them,  but  never  one  so  big  and 
generous  in  soul  as  this  one  in  her  poor 
scant  best  gown,  the  "  claret-colored  merino," 
which  she  tells  of  with  such  triumph  in  her 
diary.  Amid  her  grim  surroundings,  she  had 
the  gracious  instincts  of  a  queen.  It  was  her 
delight  to  give,  to  feed  living  creatures,  to 
make  them  happy  in  body  and  soul. 

She  would  so  welcome  you  in  her  home  to 
a  butterless  baked  potato  and  a  glass  of  milk 
that  you  would  never  forget  the  delicious 
feast.  Or,  if  she  had  no  potato  or  milk  to 
offer,  she  would  take  you  through  the  woods 
to  the  river,  and  tell  you  old  legends  of  colony 
times,  and  be  so  witty  and  kind  in  the  doing 
of  it  that  the  day  would  stand  out  in  your 
memory  ever  after,  differing  from  all  other 
days,  brimful  of  pleasure  and  comfort. 

With  this  summer,  however,  the  darkest 
hour  of  her  life  passed.  A  few  months  after  I 
saw  her  she  went  as  a  nurse  into  the  war, 

[40] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

and  soon  after  wrote  her  "  Hospital  Sketches." 
Then  she  found  her  work  and  place  in  the 
world. 

Years  afterward  she  came  to  the  city  where 
I  was  living  and  I  hurried  to  meet  her.  The 
lean,  eager,  defiant  girl  was  gone,  and  instead, 
there  came  to  greet  me  a  large,  portly,  mid- 
dle-aged woman,  richly  dressed.  Everything 
about  her,  from  her  shrewd,  calm  eyes  to 
the  rustle  of  her  satin  gown  told  of  assured 
success. 

Yet  I  am  sure  fame  and  success  counted 
for  nothing  with  her  except  for  the  material 
aid  which  they  enabled  her  to  give  to  a  few 
men  and  women  whom  she  loved.  She  would 
have  ground  her  bones  to  make  their  bread. 
Louisa  Alcott  wrote  books  which  were  true 
and  fine,  but  she  never  imagined  a  life  as 
noble  as  her  own. 

The  altar  for  human  sacrifices  still  stands 
and  smokes  in  this  Christian  day  of  the  world, 
and  God  apparently  does  not  reject  its  offer- 
ings. 

Of  the  group  of  famous  people  in  Concord 
in  1862,  Mr.  Emerson  was  best  known  to  the 

[41] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

country  at  large.  He  was  the  typical  Yankee 
in  appearance.  The  tall,  gaunt  man,  with  the 
watchful,  patient  face  and  slightly  dazed  eyes, 
his  hands  clasped  behind  his  back,  that  came 
slowly  down  the  shady  village  street  toward 
the  Wayside  that  summer  day,  was  Uncle 
Sam  himself  in  ill-fitting  brown  clothes.  I 
often  have  wondered  that  none  of  his  biogra- 
phers have  noticed  the  likeness.  Voice  and 
look  and  manner  were  full  of  the  most  ex- 
quisite courtesy,  yet  I  doubt  whether  he  was 
conscious  of  his  courtesy  or  meant  to  be  de- 
ferential. Emerson,  first  of  all,  was  a  student 
of  man,  an  explorer  into  the  dim,  obscure  re- 
gions of  human  intelligence.  He  studied  souls 
as  a  philologist  does  words,  or  an  entomolo- 
gist beetles.  He  approached  each  man  with 
bent  head  and  eager  eyes.  "  What  new  thing 
shall  I  find  here  ?  "  they  said. 

I  went  to  Concord,  a  young  woman  from 
the  backwoods,  firm  in  the  belief  that  Emer- 
son was  the  first  of  living  men.  He  was  the 
modern  Moses  who  had  talked  with  God 
apart  and  could  interpret  Him  to  us. 

When  I  heard  him  coming  into  the  parlor 

[4»] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

at  the  Wayside  my  body  literally  grew  stiff 
and  my  tongue  dry  with  awe.  And  in  ten 
minutes  I  was  telling  him  all  that  I  had  seen 
of  the  war,  the  words  tumbling  over  each 
other,  so  convinced  was  I  of  his  eagerness  to 
hear.  He  was  eager.  If  Edison  had  been 
there  he  would  have  been  just  as  eager  to 
wrench  out  of  him  the  secret  of  electricity,  or 
if  it  had  been  a  freed  slave  he  would  have 
compelled  him  to  show  the  scars  on  his  back 
and  lay  bare  his  rejoicing,  ignorant,  half-an- 
imal soul,  and  an  hour  later  he  would  have 
forgotten  that  Edison  or  the  negro  or  I  were 
in  the  world  —  having  taken  from  each  what 
he  wanted. 

Naturally  Mr.  Emerson  valued  the  abnor- 
mal freaks  among  human  souls  most  highly, 
just  as  the  unclassable  word  and  the  mongrel 
beetle  are  dearest  to  the  grammarian  or  the 
naturalist.  The  only  man  to  whose  authority 
he  bowed  was  Alcott,  the  vague,  would-be 
prophet,  whose  ravings  he  did  not  pretend  to 
fathom.  He  apparently  shared  in  the  popu- 
lar belief  that  eccentricity  was  a  sign  of 
genius. 

[43] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

He  said  to  me  suddenly  once,  "  I  wish 
Thoreau  had  not  died  before  you  came.  He 
was  an  interesting  study." 

"Why?"  I  asked. 

"Why?  Thoreau?"  He  hesitated,  think- 
ing, going  apparently  to  the  bottom  of  the 
matter,  and  said  presently :  "  Henry  often 
reminded  me  of  an  animal  in  human  form. 
He  had  the  eye  of  a  bird,  the  scent  of  a  dog, 
the  most  acute,  delicate  intelligence  —  but 
no  soul.  No,"  he  repeated,  shaking  his  head 
with  decision,  "  Henry  could  not  have  had  a 
human  soul." 

His  own  perception  of  character  was  an 
intuition.  He  felt  a  fine  trait  as  he  would  a 
fine  strain  of  music.  Coming  once  to  Phila- 
delphia, he  said,  almost  as  soon  as  he  entered 
the  house,  "  So  Philip  Randolph  has  gone ! 
That  man  had  the  sweetest  moral  nature  I 
ever  knew.  There  never  was  a  man  so  lack- 
ing in  self-consciousness.  The  other  day  I 
saw  in  the  London  '  Times '  that '  the  Ameri- 
can, Randolph,  one  of  the  three  greatest 
chess  players  in  the  world  was  dead.'  I  knew 
Philip  intimately  since  he  was  a  boy,  and  I 

[44] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

never  heard  him  mention  the  game.  I  did 
not  even  know  that  he  played  it.  How  fine 
that  was !  "  he  said,  walking  up  and  down  the 
room.   "  How  fine  that  was  !  " 

Emerson  himself  was  as  little  likely  to 
parade  his  merits  as  Randolph,  but  not  from 
any  lack  of  self-appreciation.  On  the  con- 
trary, his  interest  in  his  Ego  was  so  domi- 
nant that  it  probably  never  occurred  to  him 
to  ask  what  others  thought  of  him.  He  took 
from  each  man  his  drop  of  stored  honey, 
and  after  that  the  man  counted  for  no  more 
to  him  than  any  other  robbed  bee.  I  do  not 
think  that  even  the  worship  which  his  dis- 
ciples gave  him  interested  him  enough  to 
either  amuse  or  annoy  him. 

It  was  worship.  No  such  homage  has  ever 
been  paid  to  any  American.  His  teaching 
influenced  at  once  the  trend  of  thought  here 
and  in  England ;  the  strongest  men  then  liv- 
ing became  promptly  his  disciples  or  his 
active  antagonists. 

But  outside  of  this  central  circle  of  scholars 
and  original  thinkers,  there  were  vast  outlying 
provinces  of  intelligence  where  he  reigned 

[45] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

absolutely  as  does  the  unseen  Grand  Llama 
over  his  adoring  votaries.  New  England  then 
swarmed  with  weak-brained,  imitative  folk 
who  had  studied  books  with  more  or  less 
zeal,  and  who  knew  nothing  of  actual  life. 
jThey  were  suffering  under  the  curse  of  an 
education  which  they  could  not  use;  they 
were  the  lean,  underfed  men  and  women  of 
villages  and  farms,  who  were  trained  enough 
to  be  lawyers  and  teachers  in  their  commu- 
nities, but  who  actually  were  cobblers,  mill- 
hands,  or  tailoresses.  *They  had  revolted 
from  Puritanism,  not  to  enter  any  other  live 
church,  but  to  fall  into  a  dull  disgust,  a 
nausea  with  all  religion.  To  them  came  this 
new  prophet  with  his  discovery  of  the  God 
within  themselves.  They  hailed  it  with  accla- 
mation. The  new  dialect  of  the  Transcen- 
dentalist  was  easily  learned.  They  talked  it  as 
correctly  as  the  Chinaman  does  his  pigeon 
EnglishJ  Up  to  the  old  gray  house  among 
the  pines  in  Concord  they  went  —  hordes  of 
wild-eyed  Harvard  undergraduates  and  lean, 
underpaid  working-women,  each  with  a  dis- 
ease of  soul  to  be  cured  by  the  new  Healer. 

[46] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  give  to  the  pre- 
sent generation  an  idea  of  the  devout  faith  of 
these  people.  Keen-witted  and  scholarly  as 
some  of  them  were,  it  was  as  absolute  as  that 
of  the  poor  Irishman  tramping  over  the  bogs 
in  Munster  to  cure  his  ailments  by  a  drink 
of  the  water  of  a  holy  well. 

Outside  of  these  circles  of  disciples  there 
was  then  throughout  the  country  a  certain 
vague  pride  in  Emerson  as  an  American 
prophet.  We  were  in  the  first  flush  of  our 
triumph  in  the  beginnings  of  a  national  litera- 
ture. We  talked  much  of  it.  Irving,  Pres- 
cott,  and  Longfellow  had  been  English,  we 
said,  but  these  new  men  —  Holmes  and  Low- 
ell and  Hawthorne  —  were  our  own,  the  in- 
digenous growth  of  the  soil.  In  the  West 
and  South  there  was  no  definite  idea  as  to 
what  truth  this  Concord  man  had  brought 
into  the  world.  But  in  any  case  it  was 
American  truth  and  not  English.  Emer- 
son's popularity,  therefore,  outside  of  New 
England  was  wide,  but  vague  and  imper- 
sonal. 

It  was  very  different  with   Dr.    Holmes. 

[47] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Everybody  who  cared  for  books,  whether 
in  New  York  clubs,  California  ranches,  or 
Pennsylvania  farms,  loved  and  laughed  with 
"  the  little  doctor,"  as  he  was  fondly  called. 
They  discussed  his  queer  ways  and  quoted 
his  last  jokes  as  if  he  had  been  the  autocrat 
at  their  own  breakfast-table  that  morning. 
His  output  of  occasional  verses  was  enor- 
mous and  constant.  The  present  genera- 
tion, probably,  regard  most  of  them  as  paste 
jewels,  but  they  shone  for  us,  the  purest  of 
gems.  He  was  literally  the  autocrat  of  the 
young  men  and  women  of  his  time.  He 
opened  the  depths  of  their  own  hearts  to 
them  as  nobody  else  had  done,  and  they  ran 
to  him  to  pour  out  their  secrets.  Letters  — 
hundreds  in  a  day — rained  down  on  him 
with  confidences,  tragic,  pathetic,  and  ridicu- 
lous, but  all  true.  The  little  man  was  alive 
with  magnetism;  it  fired  his  feeblest  verse, 
and  drew  many  men  and  all  women  to  him. 

Physically,  he  was  a  very  small  man,  hold- 
ing himself  stiffly  erect  —  his  face  insignifi- 
cant as  his  figure,  except  for  a  long,  obstinate 
upper  lip  ("  left  to  me,"  he  said  one  day,  "  by 

[48] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

some  ill-conditioned  great-grandmother  "),  and 
eyes  full  of  a  wonderful  fire  and  sympathy. 
No  one  on  whom  Dr.  Holmes  had  once  looked 
with  interest  ever  forgot  the  look  —  or  him. 
He  attracted  all  kinds  of  people  as  a  brilliant, 
excitable  child  would  attract  them.  But  no- 
body, I  suspect,  ever  succeeded  in  being  famil- 
iar with  him. 

Americans  at  that  time  seldom  talked  of 
distinction  of  class  or  descent.  You  were  only 
truly  patriotic  if  you  had  a  laborer  for  a  grand- 
father and  were  glad  of  it.  But  the  Autocrat 
was  patrician  enough  to  represent  the  descent 
of  a  daimio,  with  two  thousand  years  of  an- 
cestry behind  him.  He  was  the  finest  fruit  of 
that  Brahmin  order  of  New  England  which 
he  first  had  classified  and  christened.  He  had 
too  keen  an  appreciation  of  genius  not  to 
recognize  his  own.  He  enjoyed  his  work  as 
much  as  his  most  fervent  admirers,  and  openly 
enjoyed,  too,  their  applause.  I  remember  one 
evening  that  he  quoted  one  of  his  poems,  and 
I  was  forced  stupidly  to  acknowledge  that  I 
did  not  know  it.  He  fairly  jumped  to  the 
book-cases,  took  out  the  volume  and  read  the 

[49] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

verses,  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  room, 
his  voice  trembling,  his  whole  body  thrilling 
with  their  meaning. 

"  There  !  "  he  cried  at  the  end,  his  eyes  flash- 
ing, "  could  anybody  have  said  that  better  ? 
Ah-h !  "  with  a  long,  indrawn  breath  of  delight 
as  he  put  the  book  back. 

He  had  the  fervor,  the  irritability,  the  ten- 
derness of  a  woman,  and  her  whimsical  fan- 
cies, too.  He  was,  unlike  women,  eager  to  help 
you  out  with  your  unreasonable  whims.  One 
day  I  happened  to  confess  to  a  liking  for  old 
graveyards  and  the  strange  bits  of  human  his- 
tory to  be  found  or  guessed  at  in  them.  The 
result  was  that  he  became  my  cicerone  the 
next  day  to  Mount  Auburn.  It  was  an  odd 
bit  of  luck  to  fall  to  a  young  woman  from  the 
hills  that  she  should  have  the  Autocrat,  to 
whom  the  whole  country  was  paying  homage, 
all  to  herself  for  a  whole  summer  morning. 
He  took  me  to  none  of  the  costly  monuments, 
nor  graves  of  famous  folk,  but  wandered  here 
and  there  among  the  trees,  his  hands  clasped 
behind  him,  stopping  now  and  then  at  a  green 
mound,  while  he  told  me  curious  fragments 

[5°] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

of  the  life  which  was  ended  below.  He  men- 
tioned no  names  —  they  would  have  meant 
nothing  to  me  if  he  had  —  but  he  wrested  the 
secret  meaning  out  of  each  life,  pouncing  on 
it,  holding  it  up  with  a  certain  racy  enjoyment 
in  his  own  astuteness.  It  was  a  marvelous 
monologue,  full  of  keen  wit  and  delicate  sym- 
pathy and  acrid  shrewdness.  I  must  confess 
that  I  think  he  forgot  the  country  and  its  hom- 
age and  me  that  morning,  and  talked  simply 
for  his  own  pleasure  in  his  own  pathos  and 
fun,  just  as  a  woman  might  take  out  her  jewels 
when  she  was  alone,  to  hold  up  the  glittering 
strings  and  take  delight  in  their  shining.  Once, 
I  remember,  he  halted  by  a  magnificent  shaft 
and  read  the  bead  roll  of  the  virtues  of  the 
man  who  lay  beneath :  "  A  devoted  husband, 
a  tender  father,  a  noble  citizen  —  dying  trium- 
phant in  the  Christian  faith." 

"  Now  this  dead  man,"  he  said,  in  a  high, 
rasping  tone,  "was  a  prize  fighter,  a  drunkard, 
and  a  thief.  He  beat  his  wife.  But  she  puts 
up  this  stone.   He  had  money !  " 

Then  he  hurried  me  across  the  slopes  to  an 
obscure  corner  where  a  grave  was  hidden  by 

[51] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

high,  wild  grasses.  He  knelt  and  parted  the 
long  branches.  Under  them  was  a  little  head- 
stone with  the  initials  "  M.  H.,"  and  under- 
neath the  verse :  — 

She  lived  unknown  and 

few  could  know 
When  Mary  ceased  to  be, 

But  she  is  gone,  and  Oh  I 
The  difference  to  me  1 

"  Do  you  see  this  ?  "  he  asked,  in  a  whisper. 

"  Do  you  know  who  she  was  ? "  I  asked. 

"  No,  I  would  n't  try  to  find  out.  I  *d  like 
to  know,  but  I  could  n't  uncover  that  grave. 
No,  no !  I  could  n't  do  that." 

He  put  back  the  leaves  reverently  so  as 
to  hide  the  stone  again  and  rose,  and  as  he 
turned  away  I  saw  that  the  tears  stood  in  his 
eyes. 

As  we  drove  home  he  said :  "  I  believe  that 
I  know  every  grave  in  the  old  villages  within 
a  radius  of  thirty  miles  from  Boston.  I  search 
out  the  histories  of  these  forgotten  folk  in 
records  and  traditions,  and  sometimes  I  find 
strange  things  —  oh,  very  strange  things  ! 
When  I  have  found  out  all  about  them  they 

[52] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

seem  like  my  own  friends,  lying  there  for- 
gotten. But  I  know  them !  And  every  spring, 
as  soon  as  the  grass  begins  to  come  up,  I 
go  my  rounds  to  visit  them  and  see  how  my 
dead  men  do !  " 

But  with  all  his  whims  Dr.  Holmes  was  no 
unpractical  dreamer  like  his  friends  in  Con- 
cord. He  was  far  in  advance  of  his  time  in 
certain  shrewd,  practical  plans  for  the  better- 
ing of  the  conditions  of  American  life. 

One  of  his  hobbies  was  a  belief  in  a  hobby 
as  an  escape  valve  in  the  over-heated,  over- 
driven career  of  a  brain  worker. 

The  doctrine  was  almost  new  then.  The 
pace  of  life  was  as  yet  tranquil  and  moderate 
compared  to  the  present  headlong  American 
race.  But  the  doctor  foresaw  what  was  com- 
ing—  both  the  danger  and  its  remedy. 

His  camera  and  violin  were  two  of  his 
own  doors  of  escape  from  work  and  worry. 
Under  his  library  table,  too,  was  a  little  box, 
furnished  with  a  jig-saw,  lathe,  etc.  It  ran  in 
and  out  on  grooves,  like  a  car  on  a  railway. 
He  showed  it  one  day  with  triumph. 

"  I  contrived  that !  "  he  said.    "  But  only 

[53] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

my  friends  know  about  it.  People  think  I 
am  shut  in  here,  hard  at  work,  writing  poetry 
or  lectures.  And  I  am  making  jim-cracks. 
But  if  any  of  the  dunces  make  their  way  in, 
I  give  it  a  shove  —  so  !  Away  it  goes  under 
the  table  and  I  am  discovered  —  Poet  or 
Professor,  in  character  —  pen  in  hand ! "  and 
he  chuckled  like  a  naughty  boy  over  his 
successful  trick. 

Holmes,  Longfellow,  Emerson,  and  George 
Ticknor,  all  chiefs  of  differing  literary  clans, 
formed  a  fraternity  then  in  New  England 
which  never  since  has  found  its  parallel  in 
America. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  their  success 
as  individuals  or  as  a  body  in  influencing 
American  thought  was  largely  due  to  their 
friend  and  neighbor,  James  T.  Fields,  the 
shrewdest  of  publishers  and  kindest  of  men. 
He  was  the  wire  that  conducted  the  light- 
ning so  that  it  never  struck  amiss. 

His  little  house  in  Charles  Street,  with  the 
pretty  garden  sloping  to  the  river,  was  then 
the  shelter  to  which  hied  all  wandering  men 
of  letters,  from  Thackeray  and  Dickens  down 

[54] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

to  starving  poets  from  the  western  prai- 
ries. 

They  were  wisely  counseled  and  sent  upon 
the  right  path,  but  not  until  they  had  been 
warmed  and  fed  in  body  and  mind.  Mr.  Fields 
was  a  keen  man  of  business,  but  he  had  a 
kindly,  hospitable  soul. 

Hawthorne  was  in  the  Boston  fraternity 
but  not  of  it.  He  was  an  alien  among  these 
men,  not  of  their  kind.  He  belonged  to  no 
tribe.  I  am  sure  that  wherever  he  went  dur- 
ing his  whole  life,  from  the  grassy  streets  of 
Salem  to  the  docks  of  Liverpool,  on  Parisian 
boulevards  or  in  the  olive  groves  of  Bellos- 
guardo,  he  was  always  a  foreigner,  different 
from  his  neighbors.  He  probably  never  knew 
that  he  was  different.  He  knew  and  cared 
little  about  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  or  indeed 
about  the  people  around  him.  The  man  next 
door  interested  him  no  more  than  the  man  in 
Mozambique.  He  walked  through  life,  talking 
and  thinking  to  himself  in  a  language  which 
we  do  not  understand. 

It  has  happened  to  me  to  meet  many  of 
the  men  of  my  day  whom  the  world  agreed 

[55] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

to  call  great.  I  have  found  that  most  of  these 
royalties  seem  to  sink  into  ordinary  citizens 
at  close  approach. 

You  will  find  the  poet  who  wrings  the  heart 
of  the  world,  or  the  foremost  captain  of  his 
time,  driving  a  bargain  or  paring  a  potato, 
just  as  you  would  do.  You  are  disappointed 
in  every  word  and  look  from  them.  You  ex- 
pect to  see  the  divine  light  shining  through 
their  talk  to  the  office-boy  or  the  train-man, 
and  you  never  catch  a  glimmer  of  it ;  you  are 
aggrieved  because  their  coats  and  trousers 
have  not  something  of  the  cut  of  kingly  robes. 

Hawthorne  only,  of  them  all,  always  stood 
aloof.  Even  in  his  own  house  he  was  like 
Banquo's  ghost  among  the  thanes  at  the  ban- 
quet. 

There  is  an  old  Cornish  legend  that  a  cer- 
tain tribe  of  mountain  spirits  were  once  de- 
stroyed by  the  trolls,  all  except  one,  who 
still  wanders  through  the  earth  looking  for 
his  own  people  and  never  finding  them.  I 
never  looked  at  Hawthorne  without  remem- 
bering the  old  story. 

Personally  he  was  a  rather  short,  power- 

[56] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

fully  built  man,  gentle  and  low  voiced,  with 
a  sly,  elusive  humor  gleaming  sometimes  in 
his  watchful  gray  eyes.  The  portrait  with 
which  we  all  are  familiar  —  a  curled  barber- 
shop head  —  gives  no  idea  of  the  singular 
melancholy  charm  of  his  face.  There  was  a 
mysterious  power  in  it  which  I  never  have 
seen  elsewhere  in  picture,  statue,  or  human 
being. 

Wayside,  the  home  of  the  Hawthornes  in 
Concord,  was  a  comfortable  little  house  on  a 
shady,  grassy  road.  To  please  his  wife  he 
had  built  an  addition  to  it,  a  tower  into 
which  he  could  climb,  locking  out  the  world 
below,  and  underneath,  a  little  parlor,  in 
whose  dainty  new  furnishings  Mrs.  Haw- 
thorne took  a  womanish  delight.  Yet,  some- 
how, gay  Brussels  rugs  and  gilded  frames 
were  not  the  background  for  the  morbid, 
silent  recluse. 

Mrs.  Hawthorne,  however,  made  few  such 
mistakes.  She  was  a  soft,  affectionate,  femi- 
nine little  woman,  with  intuitions  subtle 
enough  to  follow  her  husband  into  his  dark- 
est moods,  but  with,  too,  a  cheerful,  practical 

[57] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Yankee  "  capacity  "  which  fitted  her  to  meet 
baker  and  butcher.  Nobody  could  have  been 
better  fitted  to  stand  between  Hawthorne 
and  the  world.  She  did  it  effectively.  When 
I  was  at  Wayside,  they  had  been  living  there 
for  two  years  —  ever  since  their  return  from 
Europe,  and  I  was  told  that  in  that  time  he 
had  never  once  been  seen  on  the  village 
street. 

This  habit  of  seclusion  was  a  family  trait. 
Hawthorne's  mother  had  managed  to  live 
the  life  of  a  hermit  in  busy  Salem,  and  her 
sister,  meeting  a  disappointment  in  early  life, 
had  gone  into  her  chamber,  and  for  more 
than  twenty  years  shut  herself  up  from  her 
kind,  and  dug  into  her  own  soul  to  find  there 
what  truth  and  life  she  could.  During  the 
years  in  which  Nathaniel,  then  a  young 
man,  lived  with  these  two  women,  he,  too, 
chose  to  be  alone,  going  out  of  the  house 
only  at  night,  and  finding  his  food  on  a  plate 
left  at  his  locked  door.  Sometimes  weeks 
passed  during  which  the  three  inmates  of  the 
little  gray  wooden  house  never  saw  each 
other. 

[58] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

Hawthorne  was  the  product  of  genera- 
tions of  solitude  and  silence.  No  wonder 
that  he  had  the  second  sight  and  was  nat- 
uralized into  the  world  of  ghosts  and  could 
interpret  for  us  their  speech. 

America  may  have  great  poets  and  novel- 
ists, but  she  never  will  have  more  than  one 
necromancer. 

The  natural  feeling  among  healthy,  com- 
monplace people  toward  the  solitary  man 
was  a  tender  sympathy  such  as  they  would 
give  to  a  sick  child. 

"  Nathaniel,"  an  old  blacksmith  in  Salem 
once  said  to  me,  "  was  queer  even  as  a  boy. 
He  certainly  was  queer.  But  you  humored 
him.    You  wanted  to  humor  him." 

One  person,  however,  had  no  mind  to  hu- 
mor him.  This  was  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody, 
Mrs.  Hawthorne's  sister.  She  was  the  mo- 
ther of  the  kindergarten  in  this  country,  and 
gave  to  its  cause,  which  seemed  to  her  first 
in  importance,  a  long  and  patient  life  of  no- 
ble self-sacrifice.  She  was  a  woman  of  wide 
research  and  a  really  fine  intelligence,  but 
she  had  the  discretion  of  a  six-year-old  child. 

[59] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

She  loved  to  tell  the  details  of  Hawthorne's 
courtship  of  her  sister,  and  of  how  she  her- 
self had  unearthed  him  from  the  tomb  of  the 
little  gray  house  in  Salem,  and  "  brought  him 
into  Sophia's  presence."  She  still  regarded 
him  as  a  demi-god,  but  a  demi-god  who  re- 
quired to  be  fed,  tutored,  and  kept  in  order. 
It  was  her  mission,  she  felt,  to  bring  him  out 
from  solitudes  where  he  walked  apart,  to  the 
broad  ways  of  common  sense. 

I  happened  to  be  present  at  her  grand  and 
last  coup  to  this  end. 

One  evening  I  was  with  Mrs.  Hawthorne 
in  the  little  parlor  when  the  children  brought 
in  their  father.  The  windows  were  open,  and 
we  sat  in  the  warm  twilight  quietly  talking 
or  silent  as  we  chose.  Suddenly  Miss  Pea- 
body  appeared  in  the  doorway.  She  was  a 
short,  stout  little  woman,  with  her  white 
stockinged  feet  thrust  into  slippers,  her  hoop 
skirt  swaying  from  side  to  side,  and  her  gray 
hair  flying  to  the  winds. 

She  lighted  the  lamp,  went  out  and 
brought  in  more  lamps,  and  then  sat  down 
and  waited  with  an  air  of  stern  resolution. 

[60] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

Presently  Mr.  Emerson  and  his  daughter 
appeared,  then  Louisa  Alcott  and  her  father, 
then  two  gray  old  clergymen  who  were  for- 
mally presented  to  Mr.  Hawthorne,  who  now 
looked  about  him  with  terrified  dismay.  We 
saw  other  figures  approaching  in  the  road 
outside. 

"  What  does  this  mean,  Elizabeth  ?  "  Mrs. 
Hawthorne  asked  aside. 

"  I  did  it.  I  went  around  and  asked  a  few 
people  in  to  meet  our  friend  here.  I  ordered 
some  cake  and  lemonade,  too." 

Her  blue  eyes  glittered  with  triumph   as\ 
Mrs.    Hawthorne    turned    away.    "  They  've  \ 
been  here  two  years,"  she  whispered,  "  and  \ 
nobody   has    met    Mr.    Hawthorne.    People 
talk.    It 's   ridiculous  !    There  's    no   reason 
why  Sophia  should  not  go  into  society.    So 
I  just  made  an  excuse  of  your  visit  to  bring 
them  in."  -"^ 

Miss  Elizabeth  has  been  for  many  years? 
among  the  sages  and  saints  on  the  heavenly^ 
hills,  but  I  have  not  yet  quite  forgiven  netf 
the  misery  of  that  moment. 

The  little  room  was  quite  full  when  there 

[61] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

rustled  in  a  woman  who  came  straight  to  Mr. 
Hawthorne,  as  a  vulture  to  its  prey.  I  never 
heard  her  name,  but  I  knew  her  at  sight  as 
the  intellectual  woman  of  the  village,  the  In- 
telligent Questioner  who  cows  you  into  idiocy 
by  her  fluent  cleverness. 

"  So  delighted  to  meet  you  at  last !  "  she 
said,  seating  herself  beside  him.  "  I  have  al- 
ways admired  your  books,  Mr.  Hawthorne. 
I  was  one  of  the  very  first  to  recognize  your 
power.  And  now  I  want  you  to  tell  me 
about  your  methods  of  work.  I  want  to  hear 
all  about  it." 

But  at  that  moment  his  wife  came  up  and  said 

that  he  was  wanted  outside,  and  he  escaped. 

A  few  moments  later  I  heard  his  steps  on  the 

floor  overhead,  and  knew  that  he  was  safe  in 

1   the  tower  for  the  night. 

He  did  not  hold  me  guilty  in  the  matter,  for 
the  next  morning  he  joined  his  wife  and  me  in 
a  walk  through  the  fields.  We  went  to  the 
Old  Manse  where  they  had  lived  when  they 
were  first  married,  and  then  wandered  on  to 
the  wooded  slopes  of  the  Sleepy  Hollow  Val- 

[  62  ] 


Boston  in  the  Sixties 

ley  in  which  the  Concord  people  had  begun  to 
lay  away  their  dead. 

It  was  a  cool  morning,  with  soft  mists  roll- 
ing up  the  hills,  and  flashes  between  of  sudden 
sunlight.  The  air  was  full  of  pungent  woody 
smells,  and  the  undergrowth  blushed  pink  with 
blossoms.  There  was  no  look  of  a  cemetery 
about  the  place.  Here  and  there,  in  a  shady 
nook,  was  a  green  hillock  like  a  bed,  as  if  some 
tired  traveler  had  chosen  a  quiet  place  for 
himself  and  lain  down  to  sleep. 

Mr.  Hawthorne  sat  down  in  the  deep  grass 
and  then,  clasping  his  hands  about  his  knees, 
looked  up  laughing. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  we  New  Englanders  begin 
to  enjoy  ourselves  —  when  we  are  dead." 

As  we  walked  back  the  mists  gathered  and 
the  day  darkened  overhead.  Hawthorne,  who 
had  been  joking  like  a  boy,  grew  suddenly 
silent,  and  before  we  reached  home  the  cloud 
had  settled  down  again  upon  him,  and  his  steps 
lagged  heavily. 

Even  the  faithful  woman  who  kept  always 
close  to  his  side  with  her  laughing  words  and 
anxious  eyes   did    not  know  that  day  how 

[63] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

fast  the  last  shadows  were  closing  in  upon 
him. 

In  a  few  months  he  was  lying  under  the 
deep  grass,  at  rest,  near  the  very  spot  where 
he  sat  and  laughed,  looking  up  at  us. 

I  left  Concord  that  evening  and  never  saw 
him  again.  He  said  good-by,  hesitated  shyly, 
and  then,  holding  out  his  hand,  said :  — 

"  I  am  sorry  you  are  going  away.  It  seems 
as  if  we  had  known  you  always." 

The  words  were  nothing.  I  suppose  he  for- 
got them  and  me  as  he  turned  into  the  house. 
And  yet,  because  perhaps  of  the  child  in  the 
cherry-tree,  and  the  touch  which  the  Ma- 
gician laid  upon  her,  I  never  have  forgotten 
them.  They  seemed  to  take  me,  too,  for  one 
moment,  into  his  enchanted  country. 

Of  the  many  pleasant  things  which  have 
come  into  my  life,  this  was  one  of  the  pleasant- 
est  and  best. 


[64] 


Ill 

IN   THE   FAR  SOUTH 

Before  we  came  to  Virginia  we  lived  in  one 
of  the  Gulf  States,  in  a  district  given  up  to 
cotton  plantations.  In  the  middle  of  these 
plantations,  in  a  wide  basin  formed  by  the 
sloping  hills,  lay  the  village  of  Big  Spring. 
Near  it  was  the  spring,  a  huge  gush  of  brown 
water  which  made  itself  into  a  creek  and 
lapped  its  crooked  way  through  the  woods. 
The  principal  house  was  a  store  where  every- 
thing could  be  bought,  from  a  plow  to  stale 
sugar-plums,  and  the  pelts  brought  by  the 
Indian  tribe  that  still  lingered  on  the  other 
side  of  the  hills. 

Along  the  grassy  road  which  led  from  the 
store  were  the  forge,  the  house  of  the  horse- 
trader,  the  shoemaker's  cabin,  and  the  tavern, 
kept  by  Ody  Peay.  No  decent  traveler  had 
ever  been  known  to  stay  overnight  in  Ody's 
dirty,  dark  chambers.    But  the  foremost  men 

[65] 


■ 


Bits  of  Gossip 

and  the  best  judges  of  liquor  in  the  State  came 
to  try  his  mint  juleps  and  sherry  cobblers. 
You  would  hear  no  better  talk  in  the  South 
than  that  which  purled  lazily  along  on  a  rainy 
afternoon  on  Ody's  gallery. 

This  was  the  village.  The  woods  crept  in 
year  by  year  as  if  they  wanted  to  close  down 
upon  it  altogether  and  smother  out  its  torpid 
life ;  live  oaks  grew  in  the  midst  of  the  streets ; 
the  moss  covered  the  roofs  and  edged  the 
huge  trough  into  which  the  water  from  the 
spring  dripped,  and  about  which  the  sleepy 
oxen  stood  in  the  hot  sunshine  and  drank 
lazily. 

Some  of  the  planters  who  daily  rode  into 
town  for  a  smoke  and  a  gossip  at  Ody's  were 
the  descendants  of  good  Protestant  Irish  fam- 
ilies ;  and  others,  still  Catholic,  traced  back 
their  ancestry  to  French  emigres  who  had 
escaped  the  guillotine. 

The  planters  were  not  energetic  cotton- 
growers.  Most  of  their  capital  and  knowledge 
went  into  their  stables,  in  which  were  some 
of  the  most  famous  running  horses  then  in 
the   country.   Their   owners    traveled   every 

[  66  ] 


In  the  Far  South 

year  with  them  and  a  great  following  of 
friends,  jockeys,  and  grooms,  to  New  Orleans 
and  up  to  the  northern  race-courses. 

The  southern  king  of  the  turf,  Gray  Eagle, 
was  partly  owned  by  Major  Delasco,  one  of 
our  neighbors,  though  Kentucky  claimed  the 
great  racer,  and  was  as  proud  of  him  as  of 
any  of  her  sons,  Marshall  or  Clay  though  he 
might  be. 

When  Kentucky  was  challenged  by  Louis- 
iana on  the  course  in  1840,  it  was  Gray  Ea- 
gle who  was  chosen  to  uphold  its  honor.  The 
whole  country  stood  breathless  as  that  race 
was  run.  The  Major  backed  the  horse  with 
every  dollar  and  acre  that  he  owned.  Thou- 
sands of  Kentuckians  risked  their  whole  for- 
tunes on  him,  and  when  it  was  certain  that 
he  would  lose,  not  a  man  from  that  State,  to 
save  himself,  would  hedge  or  bet  a  penny 
against  him.  The  ruin  of  many  an  old  family 
dated  from  that  race. 

In  his  old  age  the  great  southern  cham- 
pion was  taken  by  Major  Delasco  to  the  course 
at  Lexington,  where  his  chief  triumphs  had 
been  won.   When  the  races  were  over,  the 

[67] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

audience  waited  in  silence  while  the  old  horse, 
blind  and  tottering,  was  led  in.  He  was 
stripped ;  the  bugle  sounded  the  start.  He 
understood.  His  sightless  eyes  kindled,  his 
nostrils  quivered  as  he  was  led  around  the 
course.  Roar  after  roar  of  frantic  shouts 
greeted  him ;  every  head  was  uncovered. 
He  stepped  slowly  and  proudly,  his  head  high, 
his  breath  coming  hard. 

He  knew  that  he  was  the  conqueror,  and 
that  these  were  his  friends  come  to  welcome 
him.  Twice  he  marched  around  the  track, 
and  then  passed  out  of  sight  forever. 

"  He  knows  !  "  the  Major  said,  as  he  led  him 
out,  patting  him  with  a  shaking  hand.  "  He 
knows  it's  the  last  time.  He  has  bid  the 
world  good-by."  The  tears  ran  down  over 
his  huge  tobacco-stained  jaws  as  he  talked. 

Gray  Eagle  died  two  days  later. 

I  have  often  heard  my  mother  describe  the 
mixed  magnificence  and  squalor  of  the  life 
on  the  plantations  among  which  we  lived ;  the 
great  one-storied  wooden  houses  built  on 
piles ;  the  pits  of  mud  below  them  in  which 
the  pigs  wallowed ;  the  masses  of  crimson 
[68] 


In  the  Far  South 

roses  heaped  high  on  the  roofs,  a  blaze  of 
pure  and  splendid  color ;  the  bare  floors,  not 
too  often  scrubbed;  the  massive  buffets  cov- 
ered with  magnificent  plate,  much  of  it  cups 
and  salvers  won  on  the  turf. 

The  women  of  these  families  did  not  lead 
the  picturesque  idle  life  which  their  northern 
sisters  imagined  and  envied.  Much  of  the 
day  was  spent  in  weighing  provisions  or  cut- 
ting out  clothes  for  the  field  hands.  They  had 
few  books  —  an  odd  volume  of  poems  and 
their  Bibles,  which  they  read  devoutly  —  and 
no  amusements  but  an  occasional  hot  supper, 
to  which  they  went  in  faded  gowns  of  ancient 
cut.  But  their  jewels,  as  a  rule,  were  diamonds 
of  great  purity  and  value. 

In  our  quiet  life  afterwards  in  Virginia,  our 
sojourn  in  the  far  South  was  remembered  as  an 
uneasy  dream.  The  thick  shade  of  the  semi- 
tropical  forests,  the  mile-long  hedges  of  roses 
through  which  crawled  rattlesnakes  and  the 
deadly  upland  moccasin,  the  darting  birds 
like  jewels,  the  extravagant  slovenliness  of 
both  nature  and  man,  the  fleas,  the  ticks,  the 
chiggers,  and  countless  other  creatures  that 

[  69  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

bite  and  sting,  and  through  all  and  over  all 
the  intolerable  heat,  made  up  for  us  children 
a  strange,  enchanted  page  of  the  past  family 
history. 

The  planters  welcomed  strangers  with  ar- 
dent kindness.  They  served  God  with  the 
same  fervor.  Dancing  and  card-playing  were 
regarded  as  devices  of  the  devil,  the  south- 
ern "church  member"  being  then,  as  now, 
much  more  strict  in  abjuring  these  carnal 
deliehts  than  is  the  descendant  of  the  Puri- 


ne) 
tan. 


While  we  were  in  this  neighborhood  Major 
Delasco's  wife  gave  a  small  supper,  after 
which  there  was  a  carpet  dance.  On  the  fol- 
lowing Sunday  there  was  a  celebration  of  the 
Holy  Communion  in  the  Presbyterian  church 
of  which  she  was  a  member.  When  she  went, 
according  to  custom,  for  a  silver  token  ad- 
mitting her  to  the  table  it  was  refused.  Early 
on  Monday  morning  the  Major  sent  a  chal- 
lenge to  each  of  the  elders  and  members  of 
the  session,  eighteen  in  all.  Most  of  the  men 
whom  he  had  challenged  were  his  cronies, 
with  whom  he  supped  daily,  and  exchanged 

[70] 


In  the  Far  South 

gossip,  receipts  for  drinks,  or  the  eggs  of 
fancy  poultry. 

"  I  may  die  on  the  field,"  he  said,  "  but  I 
shall  have  vindicated  Maria's  honor,  thank 
God ! " 

This  washing  of  reputations  clean  by  blood 
was  going  on  perpetually. 

On  the  day  when  my  father  first  arrived 
at  the  village  he  was  passing  down  the  street 
when  he  observed  that  a  gentleman  was 
following  him  rapidly.  He  halted,  coming 
abreast  of  him,  and,  drawing  a  pistol,  pointed 
it  at  his  head.  Naturally  my  father  started 
back. 

"  Thank  you,  sir,"  said  the  stranger  cour- 
teously. "  It  is  the  gentleman  on  the  other 
side  of  the  street  I  wish  to  shoot." 

He  pulled  the  trigger,  and  the  gentleman 
on  the  other  side  fell  dead,  with  the  bullet  in 
his  heart.  During  the  next  six  months  more 
than  thirty  men  were  shot  on  the  same  grassy 
highway.  Every  one  of  these  deaths  was  the 
outcome  of  the  creed  which  rated  honor 
higher  than  life  —  a  creed  which  scarcely  has 
a  place  among  the  motives  of  any  man  nowa- 

[  71  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

days.  One  fact  will  show  how  stringent  it 
was  then. 

There  was  a  family  whom  I  shall  call 
Impey,  because  that  was  not  their  name,  and 
because  they  claimed  kinship  with  Sir  Elijah 
Impey,  the  judge  in  India  famous  as  the 
murderer  of  Nuncomar.  Some  French  blood 
of  a  finer  strain  than  that  of  the  English 
butcher  had  some  time  been  mixed  in  the 
race. 

One  branch  of  the  family  ended  in  an  old 
man  of  eighty,  his  daughter,  a  widow,  his 
granddaughter,  a  delicate  girl  of  sixteen,  and 
her  baby  brother. 

Many  years  after  we  had  left  the  neigh- 
borhood, Judge  Mabury,  one  of  the  planters, 
with  his  wife,  visited  us  on  their  way  home 
from  the  North.  They  had  much  to  tell  us 
of  our  old  friends. 

"  And  Mary  Impey  ?  "  some  one  asked  at 
last. 

"Oh,  little  Mary?"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Ma- 
bury. "  She  had  a  very  tryin'  experience, 
poh  child !  But  it  all  ended  right.  You  know 
she   lived    alone   with   her  grandfather  and 

[72] 


In  the  Far  South 

little  brother,  quite  remote.  She  heard  one 
day  that  Colonel  Dupree  had  spoken  —  well, 
coarsely  of  her.  I  can't  go  into  details.  The 
remark  left  a  stain  on  her  character.  She 
heard  it  in  the  mohnin',  an'  she  considered 
about  it.  She  had  no  father.  Willy  was  only 
seven ;  thah  was  nobody  but  her  grandfather, 
an'  he  was  imbecile.  So  she  called  foh  her 
pony  an'  rode  into  the  village,  an'  stopped  at 
the  tahvern,  where  the  colonel  was  likely  to 
be.  Some  gentlemen  she  knew  were  on  the 
gallery. 

" '  Is  Colonel  Dupree  inside  ? '  she  said, 
very  scared  to  speak  out  before  them  all. 

"  So  they  called  him,  and  then  came  around 
the  horse  to  talk  to  Miss  Mary. 

"  When  he  came  out  o'  the  doh,  smilin'  an' 
bowin',  she  said, '  Colonel,  I  've  been  told  you 
spoke  of  me  yesterday  in  wohds  that  I  can't 
repeat.  Thah 's  no  man  to  come  an'  ask 
about  it.  What  grounds  had  you  foh  speak- 
ing of  me  so  ? ' 

"  He  could  n't  deny  it  in  the  face  of  the 
men  standin'  thah  who  had  heard  him,,  so  he 
said :  — 

[73] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

" '  I  was  drunk  when  I  did  that.  'Fore 
Almighty  God,  Miss  Mary,'  he  said  solemnly, 
'  thah  's  no  ground  foh  it.  Thah  's  no  woman 
in  the  State  more  deservin'  of  honor  than 
you.' 

" '  That  is  enough  foh  me,'  she  said.  '  Now, 
foh  you ' —  She  put  her  hand  in  her  pocket 
and  took  out  a  little  pistol  and  shot  him 
through  the  head.  Then  she  rode  back  home 
again." 

"  She  killed  him  !  Did  n't  they  arrest  her? " 
we  cried. 

"  Arrest  her  ?  Why,  you  don't  understand. 
Thah  was  nobody  to  do  it  but  her.  Of  course 
she  was  sorry  about  it,"  said  my  friend,  strok- 
ing the  fringe  of  her  overskirt,  "  but  it  had 
to  be  done.  She  married  soon  after  that. 
Oh,  I  forgot  to  tell  you,"  she  pattered  on, 
smiling.  "  Little  Willy  cried  when  he  under- 
stood whah  Mary  had  been. 

" '  That  was  my  business,  sister,'  he  said. 

"  Bless  the  child !  of  cohse,  if  he  had  been 
a  little  bigger —  But  they  would  probably 
have  disarmed  the  boy,  and  not  have  given 
him  fair  play." 

[74] 


In  the  Far  South 

And  as  she  talked,  my  mind  swung  dizzily 
back  to  the  old  point  of  view.  What,  after 
all,  was  the  Colonel's  life,  or  any  life,  if  honor 
was  at  stake  ? 

"  Poh  Mary ! "  Aunt  Dody  was  saying. 
"  She 's  dead  now.  Died  six  years  ago,  just 
tired  out.  Her  husband  was  a  rampagious 
kind  of  creature,  and  so  were  her  daughters. 
Mary  was  always  a  timid  little  body,  and  she 
spent  her  life  tryin'  to  make  the  world  easy 
for  them." 

"  Did  she  ever  regret  what  she  had  done  ? " 

"  Oh,  no !  Why,  certainly  not !  I  never 
heard  her  speak  of  Colonel  Dupree  but  once. 
She  said,  '  I  am  sorry,  Aunt  Dody,  it  was  I 
who  had  to  do  that.  He  made  much  mischief 
in  the  world.  But  perhaps  he  's  doin'  better 
now  —  elsewhere.'  Perhaps  he  is,"  sighed 
Aunt  Theodora,  doubtfully  shaking  her  head. 

"  Of  course  you  remember,"  said  the  Judge, 
now  joining  in  the  discussion,  "  that  there 
was  a  strained  feeling  between  the  Impeys 
and  the  Delascos  ?  " 

"  A  vendetta  —  yes.    Is  it  still  going  on  ?  " 

"  Well,  we  don't  call  it  that.   Vendetta  's 

[75] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

too  big  a  name.  The  low-class  whites  in  your 
Virginia  hills  here  have  vendettas,  and  are 
always  in  the  papers.  That  was  just  a  —  dif- 
ficulty between  those  families.  They  said 
little  about  it,  but  it  has  been  going  on  since 
the  opening  of  the  country.  Thah  don't  seem 
to  have  been  any  reason  foh  it  —  no  insult  — 
nothing  tangible.  But  the  two  families  are 
different,  and  apparently  they  can't  tolerate 
each  other  on  the  same  earth.  Foh  fifty  years 
not  a  Delasco  died  in  his  bed.  Yes,  they  cer- 
tainly ran  it  pretty  hard  then." 

As  he  spoke,  the  forgotten  story  came  back 
to  me.  Neither  family  had  allowed  the  feud 
to  absorb  their  lives.  They  were  planters, 
lawyers,  or  speculators,  many  of  them  busy 
and  useful  men.  But  when  one  of  their  natu- 
ral enemies  came  on  their  path  they  rid  it  of 
him  as  they  would  of  any  other  noxious  ver- 
min. Their  neighbors  had  always  looked  on 
with  mild  regret.  It  was  a  pity,  they  thought, 
that  two  such  important  and  agreeable  fami- 
lies felt  it  to  be  their  duty  to  kill  each  other 
on  sight.  But  nothing  in  their  code  could 
have  been  more  underbred  than  interference. 

[76] 


In  the  Far  South 

"  There  are  families,"  the  Judge  said  pon- 
derously, "  that  die  of  consumption,  and  some 
are  mowed  down  by  scrofula.  But  it  does  n't 
seem  to  be  God's  law  that  an  Impey  or  a 
Delasco  should  die  of  disease.  They  were 
meant  to  make  an  end  of  each  other.  And 
of  cohse  you  can't  run  against  God's  law." 

"  What  became  of  Major  Delasco  ?  "  we 
asked.  "  When  we  left  Big  Spring  he  had 
eighteen  duels  on  hand." 

The  Judge  laughed.  "  Oh,  he  came  through 
them  without  a  scratch,  and  others  —  others. 
Gentlemen  shot  wide  with  the  Major.  He 
was  a  friendly  old  soul,  pottering  about,  al- 
ways bragging  of  his  fancy  poultry  or  his 
brew  of  apple  toddy.  One  of  the  Texan  Im- 
peys  made  an  end  of  him.  Picked  a  quarrel 
on  the  road,  and  used  his  knife  on  the  old 
man.  I  never  asked  the  details.  I  could  n't 
hear  them.  The  Major's  death  was  a  great 
shock  to  me  —  a  great  shock." 

"  And  then,  the  Texas  Impey  ?  " 

"  Well,  of  course  the  Major's  sons  set  out 
at  once  after  him.  But  Dan,  their  old  coach- 
man, met  him  on  the  street  in  Huntsville,  and 

[77] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

shot  him  on  sight.  He  was  the  last  of  that 
branch,  fortunately.    A  bad  lot." 

"  Then  the  Impey  family  is  extinct  ?  " 

"No.  There's  Willy,  Mary's  brother," 
growled  the  Judge,  with  a  sniff.  "  I  've  no- 
thing to  say  against  Willy.  He 's  a  pleasant, 
affectionate  lad.  But  somehow  he  '11  never 
raise  cotton." 

I  never  knew  the  man  whom  I  call  Willy 
Impey,  except  through  our  mutual  friends. 
He  was  for  years  a  favorite  leader  of  the 
German  at  Saratoga  and  the  White  Sulphur 
Springs,  and  was  always  a  prominent  figure 
at  the  Mardi  Gras  —  a  little,  gay,  fair  man,  as 
nervous  and  affectionate  as  a  woman.  He 
went  reluctantly  into  the  war,  "  not  wanting 
to  kill  anybody,  not  even  the  Yankees,"  but 
once  in  he  fought  with  a  blind  fury. 

The  end  of  the  struggle  left  him  ruined. 
He  tried  once  or  twice  weakly  to  earn  his 
living,  but  soon  collapsed  into  the  old  routine 
of  dancing  and  card-playing.  He  could  n't, 
as  the  Judge  expressed  it,  "  raise  cotton  "  —  a 
more  venial  fault  of  character  always  in  the 
South  than  in  the  North.    His  mother  had  a 

[78] 


In  the  Far  South 

small  income,  and  he  lived  with  her.  But  she 
never  was  satisfied  with  him.  She  was  a  wo- 
man of  fine  presence,  and  much  fluency.  She 
talked  a  good  deal  of  "  men  who  etched  their 
names  high  on  the  roll  of  southern  chivalry." 

But  Willy  did  not  trouble  himself  with 
etching  his  name  anywhere. 

Mrs.  Mabury,  on  one  of  her  visits,  years 
later,  told  us  of  his  death. 

"  Willy,"  she  said,  "was  just  going  seriously 
to  work,  when  he  was  cut  off.  He  was  quite 
in  earnest  that  time.  Of  cohse  he  had  his 
jokes  and  songs  as  always  —  it  would  n't  have 
been  Willy  if  he  had  n't.  As  for  drink  —  he 
didn't  take  to  it  regularly  —  no.  But  occa- 
sionally, of  cohse  — 

"  He  owned  a  large  track  at  Big  Spring, 
and  he  decided  to  come  back  and  grow  cot- 
ton thah.  He  was  n't  goin'  to  do  it  in  the  old 
way,  either.  He  looked  into  the  new  methods, 
and  hired  an  expert  as  overseer,  and  spent 
what  little  he  had  in  machinery  and  the  like. 
Well,  the  overseer  arrived  and  began  work. 
Willy  was  to  come  next  week.  But,  you  see, 
in  all  these  years  the  Delascos  had  seated 

[79] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

themselves  firmly  at  the  Spring.  They  used 
the  old  methods,  and  the  word  got  about  that 
this  Impey  fellow  meant  to  run  them  out  with 
his  modern  improvements.  The  Judge  heard 
the  storm  risin',  and  he  wrote  to  Willy  beg- 
ging him  not  to  come. 

" '  Foh  God's  sake,'  he  said,  '  don't  open  up 
the  old  grudge!  Thah'll  be  trouble!'  But 
Willy  appeared  on  the  day  set,  smilin'  an' 
funnin'  away  as  usual. 

" '  Pretty  talk,'  he  says,  '  that  a  man  cahn't 
fahm  his  own  ground  as  he  likes  in  this  year 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  a  Christian  com- 
munity. Why,  bless  yoh  soul,  Aunt  Dody,  I  've 
no  grudge  against  the  Delascos ! '  he  says. 

"  But  the  Delascos  met  in  their  houses  an' 
wohked  each  other  up  to  a  fury.  It  was  n't 
Willy's  fahm  they  were  against,  it  was  Willy. 
They  are  reasonable  men  —  some  of  them. 
But  it  was  the  old  hate  comin'  up  again  in 
their  blood.  They  could  n't  help  it,  I  suppose. 
Well  " —  she  glanced  around,  suddenly  pale, 
"  it  was  done,  an'  I  was  thah." 

"You?" 

"  Yes.    I  heard  what  was  planned  early  in 

[80] 


In  the  Far  South 

the  mohnin'.  The  Judge  had  gone  to  the  city, 
so  I  went  myself  to  the  tahvern  whah  Willy 
was — Ody  Peay's,  you  know,  only  it 's  another 
house,  an'  Ody 's  dead.  Willy  was  upstahs  eat- 
in'  his  breakfast.  He  laughed  at  me.  I  told 
him  they  said  he  should  not  leave  the  town 
alive.  '  Dear  Aunt  Dody,'  he  said,  '  they  've 
been  scaring  you  because  you  're  a  woman.' 

"  Then  the  landlord  came  in,  out  of  breath. 
'  Mr.  Impey,'  he  said,  '  the  Delascos  are  below 
in  the  hall  —  six  of  them.  They  sent  word 
foh  you  to  come  down.  Every  man  of  'em  has 
his  gun  ! '  Willy  stood  up.  He  had  no  blood 
in  his  face.  You  know  Willy  never  was  a 
fighter. 

" '  I  am  not  armed,  Mr.  Pomeroy,'  he  said. 
1  Do  the  gentlemen  know  that  I  am  not 
armed  ? ' 

"  '  Yes.  They  don't  keer.  They  bid  me  tell 
you  thah  was  but  one  Impey  livin',  and  the 
earth  was  tired  of  carrying  him.' 

"  Pomeroy  ran  into  a  back  room.  '  Hyah, 
sir,'  he  says ;  '  thah  's  a  ladder  down  into  the 
kitchen.  I  can  hide  you  in  the  cellar.  Come. 
Thah 's  a  chance ! ' 

[81] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

"  Willy  ran  to  the  ladder  an'  then  stopped. 
'  Mother  would  n't  have  me  skulk  like  a  rat  in 
a  hole,'  he  said,  standin'  thah. 

"  I  was  so  wild,  I  ran  out  on  the  stairs. 
They  were  all  below.  '  Men,'  I  screamed,  *  are 
you  goin'  to  murder  him  in  cold  blood  ?  Six 
against  one  !  Are  you  devils  ? '  I  don't  know 
what  I  said  to  them. 

"  Old  John  Delasco  answered  me.  '  Mistress 
Mabury,'  he  said,  'go  back.  Don't  meddle 
hyah.  It 's  the  last  of  a  bad  breed  goin'  to  be 
wiped  out ! ' 

"  An'  that  man  had  eaten  at  my  table  an' 
walked  with  me  to  church ! 

"  I  went  back.  Willy  was  standin'  thah. 
His  thin  little  face  was  like  that  of  a  corpse. 
I  begged  him  to  go  down  the  ladder.  It  would 
have  been  a  sure  escape.  But  he  shook  his 
head. 

"  •  Mother  will  be  satisfied  with  this,'  he 
said.  ■  I  could  n't  live  like  a  man,  but  I  can 
die  like  one ; '  and  he  gave  a  queer  smile.  '  Tell 
her,  Aunt  Dody,'  he  said. 

"  Then  he  flung  the  door  open  and  stopped 
at  the  head  of  the  stairs. 

[82] 


In  the  Far  South 

" '  I  am  here,  gentlemen,'  he  said,  drawing 
himself  up,  and  he  folded  his  arms  and  walked 
slowly  down  the  steps. 

"  They  let  him  come  halfway,  and  then  — 

"  The  poor  little  man  was  lyin',  all  blood, 
where  he  fell  when  I  ran  down.  I  lifted  his 
head  in  my  arms,  but  he  only  spoke  once. 

" « Tell  mother,'  he  said." 


[83] 


IV 

THE   SCOTCH-IRISHMAN 

Sitting  by  the  chimney  corner  as  we  grow 
old,  the  commonest  things  around  us  take  on 
live  meanings  and  hint  at  the  difference  be- 
tween these  driving  times  and  the  calm,  slow 
moving  days  when  we  were  young. 

Now  here  beside  me,  for  instance,  is  an 
old  high  clock — the  kind  whose  one  weight 
hangs  on  groaning  chains  —  such  as  the  first 
Swedish  settlers  brought  with  them  on  their 
barkentine,  the  Key  of  Calmar,  the  first  vessel 
to  sail  up  Delaware  Bay  yonder,  then  a  silent 
and  nameless  flood  of  water. 

It  reminds  me  of  just  such  a  clock  which 
stood  in  a  farmhouse  in  Pennsylvania  fifty 
years  ago,  and  of  a  little  circumstance  con- 
cerning it  which  has  a  curious  significance. 

I  was  a  visitor  one  fall  in  this  house,  a  large 
stone  homestead  set  on  a  low  hill,  with  its 
barns  and  corn  ricks  and  cider  presses,  hedged 

[  84  ] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

in  by  orchards  and  rolling  wheat  fields,  while 
beyond  stretched  miles  of  forests  of  oak  and 
sycamore.  Nowhere  in  this  country,  from  sea 
to  sea,  does  nature  comfort  us  with  such 
assurance  of  plenty,  such  rich  and  tranquil 
beauty  as  in  those  unsung,  unpainted  hills  of 
Pennsylvania. 

The  farmer's  family  belonged  to  what  in 
England  would  be  called  the  upper  middle 
class,  and  in  France  the  haute  bourgeoisie. 
They  were  of  Scotch-Irish  blood.  Their  kins- 
folk were  the  small  lawyers,  doctors,  ministers, 
and  farmers  of  country  places;  these  men 
drove  the  plow,  the  women  milked,  cooked, 
and  sewed.  But  there  was  a  Knabe  Grand  in 
the  parlor  and  fine  damask  in  the  linen  closet 
and  on  a  couple  of  shelves  some  books,  — 
Scott,  and  the  "  Spectator,"  and  Bunyan's 
Complete  Works,  cook  books  and  Caesar, 
and  Black  on  the  Horse.  I  don't  believe  you 
could  find  just  that  kind  of  people  now  in 
the  whole  country. 

One  cool  September  afternoon  the  clock 
mender  came  to  the  farm  on  his  rounds.  He 
drove  a  stout  gray  mare,  in  a  little  wagon  with 

[85] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

one  seat  and  a  box  at  the  back,  in  which  were 
his  tools  and  a  basket  of  provisions,  for  he 
made  long  journeys  across  the  Alleghany 
Mountains,  and  there  were  few  country  inns 
in  those  days.  Each  farmer's  wife  when  he 
was  going  away  gave  him  a  plentiful  "  piece  " 
for  two  or  three  meals.  He  managed  to  visit 
each  farmhouse  once  in  a  year,  gathering  the 
cream  of  the  gossip  from  the  Juniata  to  the 
Ohio. 

We  saw  him  coming  up  the  long  avenue  of 
oaks  and  sycamores,  waving  his  whip  cheer- 
fully. He  had,  too,  a  little  horn,  which  he 
tooted  to  give  notice  of  his  arrival.  The  farmer 
was  in  the  meadows  a  mile  away,  but  his  wife 
welcomed  him,  and  bade  him  carry  his  carpet 
sack  upstairs,  for  it  was  a  matter  of  course 
that  he  would  stay  all  night. 

Then  he  went  into  the  living-room  and 
hurried,  box  in  hand,  to  the  high  clock  in  the 
corner.  His  hostess  ran  after  him  with  an 
anxious  face. 

"  Yes,  yes,  I  understand,"  he  said,  and  step- 
ping on  a  chair  put  his  hand  behind  a  gilt 
dragon  on  the  top  of  the  clock  and  brought 
[86] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

out  a  black  earthen  teapot  with  a  broken 
spout,  and  gave  it  to  her. 

"  I  know,"  he  said,  with  a  significant  nod 
as  she  hurried  away.  "  I  doctor  all  the  clocks 
in  Pennsylvania  west  of  the  Alleghanies,  and 
there  is  not  one  in  a  hundred  which  has  not 
an  old  teapot  on  the  top.  It  is  the  farmer's 
bank." 

Later  in  the  day  my  hostess  beckoned  me 
into  her  room,  and  lifting  the  lid  of  the  old 
pot  held  it  before  me.  It  was  full  to  the  brim 
of  coins,  gold  eagles,  silver  dollars,  Spanish 
"levies"  and  "fips,"  even  copper  cents. 

"  This  is  our  bank,"  she  said,  with  a  proud 
smile.  "  We  started  it  the  day  after  we  were 
married.  Penny  by  penny.  All  John  could 
scrape  up.  My  money  for  butter  and  for  the 
calves.  Jem  never  could  have  got  through 
college  but  for  this  old  pot,  and  all  Molly's 
plenishing  when  she  was  married  came  out 
of  it." 

The  broken  teapot  was  significant  of  the 
business  habits  of  the  American  of  that  day 
of  the  Middle  States.  He  worked  steadily, 
he  had  scarcely  heard  of  speculation;  if  he  be- 

[87] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

came  a  "  warm  "  man  it  was  by  dint  of  saving. 
The  old  teapot  held  countless  comforts  de- 
nied, countless  innocent  pleasures  given  up. 
His  object  in  work  or  in  saving  was  to  edu- 
cate his  children — to  push  them  on.  He  must 
add  acre  to  acre  to  the  farm  for  Joe ;  he  must 
help  Bill  into  the  law— "Bill  had  a  gift  of  the 
gab ;  "  he  must  give  Harry  his  schooling  for 
the  ministry.  There  was  a  feeling  in  his  class, 
almost  universal  then,  that  one  son  in  a  family 
should  be  given  to  the  work  of  the  Lord. 

I  must  interrupt  myself  to  say  just  here 
that  the  character  and  manners  of  the 
Scotch-Irish  settler  in  the  Middle  States 
were  always  very  different  from  those  of  the 
Southerner  and  New  Englander.  It  is  worth 
while  to  mention  the  fact,  because  there  is  a 
vague  popular  belief  that  in  the  early  times 
there  were  neither  manners  nor  character  in 
the  country  outside  of  New  England  and 
eastern  Virginia. 

The  cause  of  this  popular  error  is  easy  to 
understand.  The  Puritan  and  Cavalier  both 
were  keen-sighted,  self-conscious  men.  Dur- 
[88  1 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

ing  the  early  years  of  the  Colonies  they  made 
anxious  interminable  notes  of  their  own  feel- 
ings and  doings.  These  notes  afterwards 
furnished  welcome  material  to  American  his- 
torians for  comment,  and  the  accumulation 
of  both  notes  and  comments  is  now  so  great, 
that  we  have  come  to  think  that  American 
history  in  our  first  century  concerned  only 
the  people  of  those  two  small  sections. 

We  are  often  told  that  the  American  de- 
rives his  intelligence  from  his  New  England 
ancestor  and  his  courage  from  the  Virginian. 
But  has  not  the  Scotch-Irishman  contributed 
to  the  national  character  his  shrewd  common 
sense,  his  loyalty  to  his  wife,  his  family,  and 
his  country  ?  Narrow,  homely  qualities,  per- 
haps.  But  they  have  their  uses,  after  all. 

Even  to  this  day  the  Scotch-Irishman 
does  not  trouble  himself  to  talk  about  his 
work,  or  to  set  forth  his  merits  or  those  of 
his  forefathers.  He  is  an  able,  reticent,  pig- 
headed, devout  fellow,  and  cares  little  what 
the  world  thinks  of  him.  His  natural  traits 
have  been  strengthened  by  circumstances. 

So,  also,  with    the    New    Englander.    He 

[89] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

landed  on  a  stony,  barren  tract,  and  a  large 
share  of  his  strength  during  two  centuries 
has  gone  to  force  a  living  out  of  it.  Hence 
he  has  come  to  regard  economy  —  a  neces- 
sary unpleasant  quality  at  best  —  as  the  chief 
of  virtues.  He  has  cultivated  habits  which 
verge  on  closeness  in  dealing  with  food, 
and  with  the  expression  of  feeling,  and 
even  —  his  enemies  think  —  with  feeling 
itself. 

Why  did  he  not  in  the  beginning  push  on 
away  from  the  barren  coast  to  the  lands 
below  —  rich  as  the  garden  of  the  Lord  ?  It 
was  no  doubt  a  very  poetic,  picturesque  thing 
to  land  on  Plymouth  Rock ;  but  surely  it  was 
a  stupid  thing  to  stay  there. 

The  Scotch-Irish  new-comer  took  posses- 
sion of  the  fat  hillsides  and  plains  of  Penn- 
sylvania and  West  Virginia.  He  has  had  to 
spend  but  little  of  his  force  in  earning  a  liv- 
ing. He  brought  with  him  as  a  rule  some 
little  capital,  and  with  it  took  up  large  tracts 
and  built  cabins  and  forts. 

His  son  settled  himself  more  firmly  on  the 
land.    He  built  —  not  the  thin  wooden  cot- 

[90] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

tages  of  the  Northern  States  —  but  solid 
houses  of  brick  or  gray  uncut  stone. 

Many  of  these  old  homesteads  are  still 
standing  on  the  hills  which  slope  from  the 
heights  of  the  Alleghanies  down  to  the  rich 
river-bottoms  below.  They  are  surrounded 
by  huge  barns,  offices,  and  cider  presses  in- 
closed in  great  gardens  and  orchards.  Be- 
yond these  stretch  fields  of  waving  corn  and 
pasture  lands.  More  than  all  the  dwellings 
in  the  world,  —  from  English  castle  to  Swiss 
hut, — these  old  homesteads  seem  to  me  to 
express  the  protection  and  peace  of  home. 

Their  builders  managed  to  bring  into  them 
many  comforts  and  even  luxuries  from  the 
old  country.  The  woodwork  in  the  one  that 
I  knew  best  was  mahogany,  imported  from 
England  when  it  had  to  be  carried  in  a  sail- 
ing vessel  to  the  colonies  and  across  the  Alle- 
ghany Mountains  in  wagons.  I  must  confess 
that  the  cleanly  zeal  of  its  owners  put  a  coat 
of  white  paint  at  once  on  the  rich  wine- 
colored  doors  and  mantels,  and  repeated  it 
every  spring. 

The  mistress  had,  too,  her  silver  plate  and 

[91] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

delicate  china,  which  was  brought  to  her  in 
the  same  way.  The  great  establishment  was 
self-supporting  —  pork,  beef,  and  venison 
were  salted  down  for  winter  use ;  pickles, 
vegetables,  and  preserves  stored ;  there  was 
a  great  dairy;  a  loom  room  where  all  the 
linen  was  woven ;  the  kitchens  swarmed  with 
servants,  bound  apprentices,  Redemptorists, 
and  black  bondsmen,  for  Pennsylvania  as 
yet  had  not  rid  herself  of  slavery. 

The  mother  of  the  family  was  expected 
not  only  to  know  how  to  weave,  to  cook,  to 
spin,  but  to  control  this  great  household  in 
a  Christian  spirit.  Her  daughters  were  sent 
to  Philadelphia  for  "  a  year's  finishing." 
They  went  and  came  across  the  mountains 
on  horseback.  They  learned  in  this  year  to 
play  a  couple  of  tunes  on  the  guitar,  to  em- 
broider, to  make  lace  and  wax  flowers,  and 
they  each  brought  home  huge  pictures  done 
by  them  in  filagree  of  "  Washington's  Tomb 
guarded  by  Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity." 

They  belonged  to  the  generation  before 
mine.  Their  city  training  did  not  unfit  them 
for  the  work  of  pickling,  weaving,  and  cook- 

[92] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

ing,  or  the  control  of  their  own  households, 
when  the  time  came  for  them  to  marry. 

The  habits  of  these  folk,  as  I  remember 
them  when  I  was  a  child,  were  generous  and 
hospitable.  There  was  much  rivalry  between 
women  in  household  matters.  Certain  re- 
ceipts in  pastry  and  pickles  and  medicine 
were  handed  down  in  families  from  genera- 
tion to  generation.  There  were  few  formal 
dinners,  but  cover  for  the  accidental  guest 
was  always  laid  on  the  supper  table.  Every- 
day life  then  was  merry  and  cordial,  but  it 
needed  a  wedding  or  a  death  to  bring  out 
the  deeper  current  of  friendly,  tender  feeling 
in  these  people.  Death  was  then  really  an 
agreeable  incident  to  look  forward  to,  when 
one  was  sure  to  be  lauded  and  mourned 
with  such  fervent  zeal. 

The  belief  in  education  as  the  chief  good 
was  as  fervent  and  purblind  as  now.  Every 
county  had  its  small  sectarian  college :  the 
boy,  if  he  were  poor,  worked  or  taught  in 
summer  to  push  his  way  through. 

But  while  the  ordinary  life  of  these  people 
was  thus  wholesome  and  kindly,  their  religion, 

[93] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

oddly  enough,  was  a  very  different  matter. 
The  father  of  that  day  believed  that  his  first 
duty  toward  his  child  was  to  save  him  from 
hell.  The  baby,  no  matter  how  sweet  or  fair, 
was  held  to  be  a  vessel  of  wrath  and  a  ser- 
vant of  the  devil,  unless  he  could  be  rescued. 

To  effect  this  rescue  the  father  and  mother 
prayed  and  labored  unceasingly.  The  hill  of 
Zion,  up  which  they  led  the  boy,  was  no  path 
of  roses.  Above  was  an  angry  God ;  below 
was  hell.  They  taught  him  to  be  honest,  to 
be  chaste  and  truthful  in  word  and  act,  under 
penalty  of  the  rod.  The  rawhide  hung  over 
the  fireplace  ready  for  instant  use  in  most 
respectable  families.  The  father  who  spared 
it  on  his  son  felt  that  he  was  giving  him  over 
to  damnation.  Often  the  blows  cut  into  his 
own  heart  deeper  than  into  the  child's  back, 
but  he  gave  them  with  fiercer  energy,  believ- 
ing that  it  was  Satan  who  moved  him  to 
compassion. 

As  most  pleasant  things  in  life  were  then 
supposed  to  be  temptations  of  the  devil,  they 
were  forbidden  to  the  young  aspirant  to 
Heaven.    The  theatre  and  the  ballroom  were 

[94] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

denounced;  cards,  pretty  dresses,  and,  in 
some  sects,  music  and  art,  were  purveyors  of 
souls  for  the  devil.  To  become  a  Christian 
meant  to  give  up  forever  these  carnal  things. 

Parents  who  were  not  members  of  any 
church  also  taught  their  children  self-denial. 
Did  a  boy  cut  his  finger,  the  first  howl  was 
silenced  with :  "  Not  a  word !  Close  your 
mouth  tight!  A  man  never  cries!"  The 
same  adjurations  were  given  when  the  whip 
was  being  applied  to  his  back. 

A  high-tempered  child  was  held  by  many 
intelligent  parents  to  be  possessed  with  a 
kind  of  demon,  which  required  strong  mea- 
sures for  its  expulsion. 

"  You  must  break  his  spirit  and  then  he 
will  obey  you,"  was  the  universal  rule.  In 
my  childhood  I  once  heard  a  bishop,  who  I 
am  sure  was  a  kindly,  godly  man,  say :  — 

"  Whipping  does  not  always  conquer  a 
child's  spirit,  but  I  never  have  known  a  dash 
of  ice  water  on  his  spine  to  fail." 

It  was  believed  that,  once  conquered,  the 
child  would  yield  implicit  obedience  to  his 
parents,  and  in  that  unreasoning,  unquestion- 

I  95] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

ing  obedience  lay  his  one  chance  of  safety. 
Had  not  God  appointed  them  his  guardians 
during  the  years  when  his  brain  and  soul 
were  immature? 

Then  there  came  to  parents  successive 
pauses  of  doubt,  of  inquiry.  There  were 
heard  at  first  timorous  suggestions  of  "  moral 
suasion."  Was  the  soul  really  reached  by  a 
rawhide  on  the  back  ?  Why  not  appeal  to 
the  higher  nature  of  the  child?  Why  not 
give  up  thrashing  and  lure  him  to  virtue  by 
his  reason  ?  The  child  who  was  old  enough 
to  sin  was  old  enough  to  be  redeemed.  Why 
not  then  bring  about  the  awful  change  of 
soul  called  conversion,  in  infancy  ? 

This  theory,  urged  in  practice  by  pious, 
zealous  people,  caused,  half  a  century  ago,  a 
sudden  outbreak  of  infant  piety.  I  do  not 
speak  irreverently.  There  is  nothing  on 
earth  so  near  akin  to  God  as  one  of  his 
little  ones.  Our  Lord,  when  he  would  set 
before  his  apostles  an  example  for  their  lives, 
placed  a  child,  pure,  humble,  and  innocent, 
in  their  midst.  But  he  did  not  send  that 
child  out  to  preach  the  Gospel. 

[96] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

The  children  of  fifty  years  ago,  if  they 
were  nervous  and  imitative,  soon  caught  the 
religious  dialect  of  the  hour.  They  lisped  of 
regeneration  and  sanctification ;  every  village 
boasted  of  its  baby  saint,  usually  an  anaemic 
inheritor  of  consumption,  whose  diseased 
brain  fed  on  his  body.  Tales  of  his  super- 
human virtue  and  piety  were  carried  by  eager 
grandparents  and  aunts  far  and  wide,  and 
often  crept  into  print.  I  remember  especially 
one  popular  book,  —  a  memoir  of  Louisa  B., 
who  was  hopefully  converted  at  three,  and 
died,  triumphant,  praying  for  her  unregener- 
ate  neighbors,  at  four  years  of  age ! 

The  Sunday-school  libraries  were  flooded 
with  fictitious  tales  of  boy  and  girl  evan- 
gelists, who  invariably  were  weighted  in  life 
by  drunken  fathers,  fashionable  mothers,  or 
infidel  uncles.  The  conversion  of  these  sin- 
ners by  pious  infants  was  the  motive  of  most 
of  the  Sunday-school  books  of  that  day. 

Boy  preachers  were  another  product  of  this 
phase  of  education.  Lads  of  twelve  or  four- 
teen, driven  by  excitement  into  hysterical 
raptures,  were  carried  from  pulpit  to  pulpit 

[97] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

to  kindle  revivals.  Such  boys  usually  con- 
tinued in  the  public  eye,  voluble  and  zealous, 
for  a  few  years,  and  then  lapsed  into  obscurity, 
carrying  with  them  an  overweening  vanity, 
a  bitter  sense  of  failure,  and  abnormally 
dull  brains  which  yielded  them  nothing  but 
headaches. 

It  seems  incredible  to  the  shrewd,  practical, 
unimaginative  American  of  to-day  that  his 
forefathers  could  ever  have  led  their  children 
to  such  spiritual  intoxication. 

But,  after  all,  it  was  the  methods,  not  the 
motives,  of  the  man  of  that  day  that  were  at 
fault. 

The  Almighty,  you  must  remember,  was 
always  present  with  him.  He  appealed  to 
God  when  he  lay  down  to  sleep  and  when  he 
arose,  when  he  ate  or  when  he  fasted,  when 
he  wanted  rain  and  when  he  had  too  much 
rain.  If  he  should  die  suddenly  it  would  be 
by  the  visitation  of  God;  if  he  sent  out  a 
cargo  he  invoked  God,  on  the  bill  of  lading, 
to  bring  the  good  ship  into  a  safe  harbor. 
He  held  that  this  Supreme  Power  took  a  per- 
sonal interest  in  his  crops,  his  rheumatism, 

[98] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

and  his  choice  of  a  wife.  He  tried,  naturally, 
to  make  his  children  the  servants  of  this  Om- 
nipotent Ruler.  Whether  he  set  his  boy  in  a 
pulpit  or  took  him  to  the  barn  and  whipped 
him  like  a  dog,  his  motive  was  the  same  — 
to  make  him  a  Christian,  and  a  faithful  fol- 
lower of  God. 

Crime,  to  the  man  of  the  forties,  was  an 
alien  monstrous  terror.  He  was  not  forced, 
as  we  are,  by  daily  friction  with  crowds,  by 
telegraphs,  railways,  and  morning  papers,  to 
take  it  into  his  decent  jog-trot  life  and  grow 
familiar  with  it.  He  was  not  familiar  with  it. 
A  murder  became  a  traditional  horror  in  a 
neighborhood  for  generations.  The  whole 
nation  sat  up  shuddering  night  after  night 
to  hear  the  end  of  the  Parkman-Webster  trial. 
People  then  looked  at  an  atheist  or  a  di- 
vorcee as  we  would  at  the  Gila  monster. 

Religious  dogma  was  the  chief  food  for 
the  brain  of  that  long-ago  Quaker,  or  Presby- 
terian, or  Baptist.  He  wrangled  over  predes- 
tination or  immersion  at  the  table,  in  the  shop, 
as  he  got  up,  and  as  he  went  to  bed.  He  was 
ready  to  give  his  life,  as  some  of  his  fathers 

[99] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

had  done,  for  his  special  dogma.  Unfortu- 
nately, he  mistook  dogmas  for  religion.  He 
knew  the  Bible  by  heart,  and  quoted  it  inces- 
santly. He  did  this  even  though  he  were  not 
a  church  member.  Every  American  then, 
though  he  might  himself  be  a  criminal,  ven- 
erated religion.  The  minister  was  still  a  power 
in  the  land ;  he  was  the  universal  friend  and 
advisor  —  the  "  sense-carrier  "  in  the  early 
settlements.  "  The  cloth  "  was  honored  as 
the  sign  of  a  real  authority,  and  the  Bible  was 
the  most  sacred  visible  thing  on  earth.  Even 
the  sinner  acknowledged  that  it  was  the  Word 
of  God  —  that  in  it  was  written  his  own  sen- 
tence, the  law  that  gave  him  his  place  forever 
yonder  in  that  unseen  eternity.  Every  child 
in  a  respectable  family  learned  verses  from  it 
by  heart  daily.  The  family  where  this  was  not 
done  was  considered  below  caste.  Thus  the 
child  for  half  an  hour  each  day  was  made 
familiar  with  the  great  truths  of  life  in  the 
noblest  English  ever  written ;  a  training  surely 
as  useful  in  the  making  of  a  man  as  the  fin- 
ger drills  of  the  modern  kindergarten  which 
have  replaced  it. 

[  ioo  ] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

Education  was  different  then,  too.  The 
daughter  in  a  family  of  gentlefolk  was  usually 
trained  in  a  quiet  private  school  or  at  home. 
She  learned  enough  arithmetic  to  keep  her 
accounts,  enough  astronomy  to  point  out  the 
constellations,  a  little  music  and  drawing,  and 
French,  history,  and  literature  at  discretion. 
In  fact,  the  peculiar  characteristic  of  that  old 
training  was  that  it  all  was  at  discretion.  Or- 
dinary girls  learned  enough  to  enable  them 
to  pass  intelligently  through  the  ordinary 
happenings  of  their  lives.  But  if  a  girl  had 
the  capacity  or  desire  for  further  develop- 
ment in  any  special  direction,  she  easily  ob- 
tained it. 

Before  the  birth  of  the  New  Woman  the 
country  was  not  an  intellectual  desert,  as  she 
is  apt  to  suppose.  There  were  teachers  of 
the  highest  grade,  and  libraries,  and  count- 
less circles  in  our  towns  and  villages  of 
scholarly,  leisurely  folk,  who  loved  books,  and 
music,  and  Nature,  and  lived  much  apart 
with  them.  The  mad  craze  for  money,  which 
clutches  at  our  souls  to-day  as  la  grippe  does 
at  our  bodies,  was  hardly  known  then.  The 
[IOI] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

American  had  time  for  other  pursuits  and 
passions. 

Then,  too,  he  had  not  begun  to  cooperate 
■ — to  fuse  himself  into  Guilds,  and  Unions, 
and  Leagues.  The  individual  developed 
slowly  and  fully.  He  followed  his  own  chosen 
path.  Now,  the  essential  duty  set  before  him 
is  to  keep  step  with  some  body  of  men,  to  be 
one  of  a  majority  —  to  sink  himself  in  the 
mass. 

There  was  space  in  that  calm,  leisurely  life 
for  the  full  growth  of  personality.  Hence,  if 
a  boy  or  girl  had  a  call  to  any  kind  of  mental 
work,  they  followed  it  quietly  and  steadily. 
They  studied  Greek,  or  mathematics,  or  lit- 
erature, because  Nature  had  fitted  them  for 
that  especial  study. 

But  I  am  forgetting  my  old  friends  with 
their  little  black  teapot. 

Twenty  years  later  I  went  back  to  the  old 
farm.  The  orchards,  the  yellow  wheat  fields, 
the  great  silent  woods,  were  all  swept  away. 
In  their  stead  a  vast  plain,  treeless  and 
grassless,  stretched  to  the  horizon.  Here  and 
there  upon  it  huge  derricks  and  pyramids  of 

[  102] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

hogsheads  of  petroleum  rose  against  the  sky. 
The  farmhouse  was  gone;  in  its  stead  were 
the  shops  and  saloons  of  a  busy  drunken 
town. 

My  old  friends  had  struck  oil ;  their  well 
was  one  of  the  largest  in  the  State.  Money 
poured  in  on  them  in  streams,  in  floods.  It 
ceased  to  mean  to  them  education  or  com- 
fort or  the  service  of  God.  It  was  power, 
glory.  They  grew  drunk  with  the  thought  of 
it.  The  old  people  hoarded  it  with  sudden 
terror  lest  it  should  vanish.  Their  only  son 
came  to  the  East  with  his  share,  and  his 
idiotic  excesses  made  him  the  laughing  stock 
of  all  New  York.  He  was  known  as  Coal- 
Oil  Jimmy,  and  drove  every  day  on  Broad- 
way in  a  four-in-hand  with  white  horses  and 
a  band  of  music.  He  died,  I  believe,  in  an 
almshouse. 

This  was  thirty  years  ago.  You  will  search 
now  in  vain  in  that  neighborhood  for  the  old 
type  of  farm  and  farmer.  There  are  no  longer 
little  dairies  where  the  women  beat  their  fra- 
grant butter  into  shapes,  stamp  them  with 
their  initials,  and  send  them   proudly  into 

[  103] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

market.  The  butter  is  made  by  men  en  masse, 
in  huge  creameries,  and  handled  by  wooden 
paddles.  The  farmers'  daughters,  if  they  are 
well-to-do,  are  traveling  abroad;  if  they  are 
not,  the  girls  are  stenographers  or  saleswomen 
in  some  city. 

Nowhere  will  you  find  the  old  black  tea- 
pot hidden,  with  its  little  pathetic  hoardings. 
Nowhere,  either,  will  you  find  the  mad  craze 
of  sudden  wealth.  Coal-Oil  Jimmy  belonged 
to  a  generation  that  is  dead. 

We  have  grown  used  to  money.  The 
handling,  the  increase  of  it,  is  the  chief 
business  of  life  now  with  most  of  us.  The 
farmer's  wife  no  longer  gives  her  mind  to  the 
small  ambitions  of  sewing  rag  carpets  or 
making  jelly.  Even  she  has  her  little  invest- 
ments. She  keeps  an  eye  on  certain  western 
gold  mines,  in  which  she  has  secretly  "  taken 
a  flyer"  now  and  then  ;  she  even  buys  on  a 
margin  through  a  broker,  unsuspected  by 
her  husband  or  the  boys. 

The  grandson  of  these  Bible  worshipers, 
still  nominally  a  Christian,  an  educated  young 
fellow  familiar  with  the  literature  of  half  a 

[  104] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

dozen  countries,  probably  never  has  read  a 
chapter  in  the  Bible  and  never  will.  Whether 
it  is  the  Word  of  God  or  of  some  Jewish 
poets  he  really  has  never  cared  to  inquire. 
The  oddest  point,  indeed,  of  his  position  as 
to  this  question  is  his  absolute  indifference 
to  it.  He  has  a  vague  idea  that  the  Book 
was  lately  overthrown  by  the  Higher  Criti- 
cism. 

But  as  to  what  the  criticism  is,  or  what  the 
Book,  he  has  but  vague  ideas.  They  bore 
him,  and  in  his  hasty  march  through  life  he 
has  learned  the  trick  of  promptly  ridding  his 
path  of  all  things  that  bore  him. 

The  literature  of  his  work,  whatever  that 
may  be,  does  not  bore  him  —  reports  of 
stocks,  or  of  new  microbes,  or  of  findings  in 
court.  These  things  he  understands.  But 
talk  to  him  of  foreordination  or  sanctifica- 
tion,  or  any  of  the  doctrines  for  which  his 
fathers  fought  and  sometimes  died,  and  he 
will  listen  to  you  civilly,  but  privately  he  will 
think  you  a  crank  or  mad. 

What  have  these  abstractions,  he  says,  to 
do  with  life?    His  work  is  his  life.   Work 

[  i°5  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

now  puts  a  stress  and  strain  on  men  of  which 
our  ancestors  knew  little.  The  American  is 
in  the  thick  of  it.  Whether  he  be  President 
or  newspaper  reporter,  he  feels  that  he  per- 
sonally has  the  world  by  the  throat,  and  that 
if  he  loose  his  hold  for  a  minute  the  progress 
of  the  universe  will  come  to  a  stop. 

What  time  has  he  for  abstractions,  for 
looking  into  the  Trinity  or  the  Atonement, 
or  hell  itself?  These  are  mysteries,  he  says 
frankly,  which  neither  he  nor  any  other  man 
ever  did  or  ever  could  understand. 

Is  this  irreverent,  busy  fellow,  then,  less  a 
servant  of  God  than  his  lean,  church-going, 
irascible  ancestor  ? 

Prosperity  has  softened  him.  He  has  be- 
come good-humored,  cheerful,  and  kindly, 
much  more  ready  to  help  his  neighbor  than 
was  his  grandfather.  That  faithful  old  sol- 
dier fought  the  devil,  prayed  and  fasted,  and 
argued,  in  order  that  he  himself  might  escape 
from  hell.  That  was  his  chief  business  in 
life  —  to  save  his  own  soul.  He  had  little 
time  to  give  to  his  neighbor. 

The  American  business  man  now  has  his 

[  .06  ] 


The  Scotch-Irishman 

hands  too  full  of  work  to  attend  to  straight- 
ening out  his  relations  with  his  Maker.  He 
does  work  well.  He  has  nourished  the  root 
of  brotherly  love,  which  Christ  planted,  into 
a  marvelous  flowering  and  fruitage.  Asy- 
lums, free  schools,  missions  to  the  heathen, 
sick  kitchens  in  the  slums,  are  his  triumph 
and  delight.  Take  any  of  our  large  cities. 
You  may  find  the  churches  almost  empty, 
but  the  hospitals  will  be  full  and  well  sup- 
ported. 

Leading  business  men  hardly  know  the 
meaning  of  the  dogmas  for  which  their 
fathers  fought  to  the  death,  but  tell  them  of 
starving  Russians  or  plague-stricken  Hindus 
and  their  zeal  flames  out  in  white  heat.  Ships 
or  trains  cannot  fly  quickly  enough  around 
the  world  to  carry  their  help  and  good-will. 

It  is  true  that  our  people  now  do  not 
acknowledge  Christ  with  the  unquestioning 
veneration  which  their  fathers  felt.  With  a 
conceit  quite  unconscious  of  its  own  absurd- 
ity, each  college  boy  and  girl  puts  the  Al- 
mighty and  His  Messenger  to  man  on  trial, 
and  pronounces  judgment  on  them. 

[  io7] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

But,  after  all,  we  are  a  young  nation,  and 
vanity  is  a  fault  of  youth.  We  will  grow  out 
of  it  presently. 

In  the  mean  time  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
becomes  more  dominant  among  us  with  every 
year.  Never  since  Jesus  was  born  in  Bethlehem 
have  his  teachings  of  brotherly  love  so  moved 
any  people  as  they  do  these  doubting  Ameri- 
cans, here  and  to-day. 

i 


~  . 


[108] 


V 
THE  CIVIL  WAR 

I  lived,  during  three  years  of  the  war,  on 
the  border  of  West  Virginia.  Sectional 
pride  or  feeling  never  was  so  distinct  or 
strong  there  as  in  the  New  England  or  lower 
Southern  States.  We  occupied  the  place  of 
Hawthorne's  unfortunate  man  who  saw  both 
sides.  In  every  village  opinions  clashed. 
The  elders  of  the  family,  as  a  rule,  sided 
with  the  Government ;  the  young  folks  with 
the  South. 

Throughout  the  whole  country,  however, 
there  was  a  time  when  the  great  mass  of  the 
people  took  no  part  in  the  quarrel.  They 
were  stunned,  appalled.  I  never  have  seen 
an  adequate  description  anywhere  of  the 
amazement,  the  uncomprehending  horror  of 
the  bulk  of  the  American  people  which  pre- 
ceded the  firing  of  that  gun  at  Sumter.  Poli- 
ticians or  far-sighted  leaders  on  both  sides 

[  109] 


Bit s  of  Gossip 

knew  what  was  coming.  And  it  is  they  who 
have  written  histories  of  the  war.  But  to  the 
easy-going  millions,  busied  with  their  farms 
or  shops,  the  onrushing  disaster  was  as  in- 
explicable as  an  earthquake.  Their  protest 
arose  from  sea  to  sea  like  the  clamor  of  a 
gigantic  hive  of  frightened  bees. 

Each  man,  however,  after  the  American 
habit,  soon  grappled  with  the  difficulty  and 
discovered  a  cure  for  it.  He  urged  his  rem- 
edy incessantly —  in  church  councils,  in  town 
meetings,  at  the  street  corners.  The  local 
newspapers  were  filled  with  these  schemes 
for  bringing  calm  and  content  again  into  the 
country. 

One  venerable  neighbor  of  ours,  I  remem- 
ber, insisted  that,  to  warm  the  chilled  loyalty 
of  the  nation,  the  Declaration  should  be  read 
in  every  house,  night  and  morning,  at  family 
prayers.  Another,  with  the  same  intent,  pro- 
posed that  every  boy  in  the  public  schools 
should  at  once  commit  the  Constitution  to 
memory.  It  was  urged  that  women  should 
sing  the  "  Star-Spangled  Banner  "  in  season 
and  out  of  season. 

[no] 


The  Civil  War 

In  several  towns  bands  of  young  girls 
marched  through  the  streets  singing  it  in  a 
kind  of  holy  zeal,  believing,  poor  children, 
as  they  were  told,  that  they  would  soon 
"  bring  again  peace  unto  Israel." 

These  efforts  to  keep  off  the  approaching 
disaster  were  urged  in  both  southern  and 
northern  towns.  The  superstitious  fervor  of 
the  people  was  aroused.  Devout  old  men 
who,  with  tears  and  wrestlings  of  soul  for 
their  country,  prayed  themselves  to  sleep 
at  night,  naturally  had  revelations  before 
morning  of  some  remedy  for  her  mortal  ill- 
ness. Women,  everywhere,  neglected  their 
sewing,  housekeeping,  and  even  their  love 
affairs,  to  consult  and  bemoan  together. 
They  were  usually  less  devout  and  more  rad- 
ical in  their  methods  of  cure  than  the  men  ; 
demanding  that  somebody  should  at  once  be 
hanged  or  locked  up  for  life.  Whether  the 
victim  should  be  Buchanan,  Lincoln,  or  Jeffer- 
son Davis  depended  upon  the  quarter  of  the 
Union  in  which  the  women  happened  to 
live. 

Their  loyalty,  like  that  of  their  husbands, 

Em] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

depended  almost  wholly  on  their  geographi- 
cal point  of  view. 

Naturally,  these  hosts  of  terrified,  sincere 
folk  carried  their  remedies  to  the  place  where 
they  would  be  of  use.  Their  letters  and  peti- 
tions flooded  Congress  and  the  White  House 
for  a  year. 

As  the  skies  darkened,  the  country  was 
astir  with  alarmed  folk  hurrying  to  their  own 
sections  like  frightened  homing  birds.  The 
South  had  been  filled  with  traders  and  teach- 
ers from  the  North ;  northern  colleges  and 
summering  places  depended  largely  on 
southern  custom.  There  had  always  been 
much  intermarriage  in  the  well-to-do  classes 
of  the  two  sections. 

These  ties  were  torn  apart  now  with  fierce 
haste  in  the  alarm  which  followed  Lincoln's 
election.  By  the  time  that  he  started  to 
Washington  to  be  inaugurated,  the  tension  of 
feeling  throughout  the  country  had  reached 
its  limit. 

The  great  mass  of  the  people  as  yet  took 
little  interest  in  any  of  the  questions  in- 
volved except  the  vital   one  —  whether   the 

[IB] 


The  Civil  War 

Union  should  be  preserved.  The  Union,  to 
the  average  American  of  that  day,  was  as 
essential  a  foundation  of  life  as  was  his  Bible 
or  his  God. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  began  his  journey 
every  eye  was  fixed  on  him  in  an  agony  of 
anxiety.  How  would  he  meet  the  crisis  ? 
Could  he  cope  with  it?  It  is  only  one  of 
the  facts  of  history  that  his  cheerful,  jocular 
bearing  on  the  journey  convinced  the  mass 
of  people  that  he  did  not  even  know  that 
there  was  a  crisis.  The  stories  he  told  to  the 
waiting  crowds  at  every  station  were  funny, 
but  nobody  laughed  at  them. 

The  nation  grew  sick  at  heart. 

The  truth  probably  is,  that  while  the  soul 
of  the  man  faced  the  great  work  before  him, 
he  hid  his  real  thoughts  from  prying  eyes 
behind  his  ordinary  habits  of  speech. 

A  little  incident  that  I  know  to  be  true 
always  seemed  to  me  to  throw  a  light  on 
Lincoln's  character. 

There  was  a  young  girl  in  Springfield  of 
whom  he  and  his  family  were  very  fond.  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  in  the  habit  of  saying,  "  Mary 

["3] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

must  marry  P ,"  naming  a  friend  of  his 

own  living  in  another  State.    He  contrived 

to  bring  P to  Springfield  and  brought 

them  together,  with  the  result  that  they  fell 

in   love   with    each   other.    P ,  however, 

was  hopelessly  shy,  and  Mr.  Lincoln's  prod- 
dings  and  urgings  only  alarmed  and  daunted 
him. 

Two  or  three  days  before  their  departure 
for  Washington  Mrs.  Lincoln  asked  the 
scared  young  people  to  supper,  and  their 
host,  feeling  that  time  was  short,  seemed  to 
forget  the  nation  and  its  woes  in  vainly  try- 
ing to  bring  them  together.  The  evening 
was  over.  Mary  rose  to  go.  She  lived  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street. 

"  P will  see  you  home,"  said  Mr.  Lin- 
coln, going  to  the  door  with  them  in  the 
hearty  western  fashion.  A  heavy  storm  was 
raging ;  they  reached  the  pavement  to  find  a 
flood  of  water  pouring  down  the  gutter,  and 
stopped  dismayed. 

"  Carry    her,    P ,"    shouted    Lincoln. 

"  Drop  that  umbrella.  Pick  her  up  and  carry 
her  !   Wade  in,  man  !  " 

[«4] 


The  Civil  W^ar 

The  next  morning  when  Mary  came, 
blushing  and  happy,  to  tell  him  that  she  was 
engaged  before  she  reached  the  other  side  of 
the  street,  he  nodded,  laughing. 

"  I  knew  that  would  do  the  work,"  he  said. 

It  was  not,  perhaps,  a  method  used  by  the 
Vere  de  Veres,  but  it  was  very  human  —  and 
it  did  the  work. 

That  probably  is  the  key  to  many  other 
strange  actions  in  Lincoln's  life.  When  work 
was  to  be  done,  he  tried  the  first  method 
that  came  to  hand  without  any  critical  nice 
delays. 

The  volunteers  in  both  armies  were,  as  a 
rule,  a  God-fearing,  church-going  body  of 
men.  I  doubt  whether  an  American  army 
to-day  would  pay  as  much  outward  deference 
to  religion.  Stonewall  Jackson  was  not  the 
only  commander  who  prayed  at  the  head  of 
his  troops  before  going  into  action.  North 
and  South  were  equally  confident  that  God 
was  on  their  side,  and  appealed  incessantly 
to  him. 

The  town  in  which  I  lived  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  was  taken  at  once  under  the 

["5] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

control  of  the  Government  and  made  the 
headquarters  of  the  Mountain  Department, 
first  under  Rosecrans  and  then  under  Fre- 
mont. Rosecrans  impressed  the  townspeople 
as  a  plain  man  of  business,  but  Fremont  was 
the  ideal  soldier,  —  simple,  high-bred,  cour- 
teous ;  always  at  a  white  heat  of  purpose. 
His  wife  was  constantly  beside  him,  urging 
the  cause  with  all  the  wonderful  magnetism 
which  then  made  her  the  most  famous  of 
American  women. 

The  histories  which  we  have  of  the  great 
tragedy  give  no  idea  of  the  general  wretch- 
edness, the  squalid  misery,  which  entered 
into  every  individual  life  in  the  region  given 
up  to  the  war.  Where  the  armies  camped 
the  destruction  was  absolute. 

Even  on  the  border,  your  farm  was  a  waste, 
all  your  horses  or  cows  were  seized  by  one 
army  or  the  other,  or  your  shop  or  manufac- 
tory was  closed,  your  trade  ruined.  You  had 
no  money  ;  you  drank  coffee  made  of  roasted 
parsnips  for  breakfast,  and  ate  only  potatoes 
for  dinner.  Your  nearest  kinsfolk  and  friends 
passed  you  on  the  street  silent  and  scowling ; 
[116] 


The  Civil  War 

if  you  said  what  you  thought  you  were  liable 
to  be  dragged  to  the  county  jail  and  left  there 
for  months.  The  subject  of  the  war  was  never 
broached  in  your  home,  where  opinions  dif- 
fered ;  but,  one  morning,  the  boys  were  miss- 
ing. No  one  said  a  word,  but  one  gray  head 
was  bent,  and  the  happy  light  died  out  of 
the  old  eyes  and  never  came  to  them  again. 
Below  all  the  squalor  and  discomfort  was  the 
agony  of  suspense  or  the  certainty  of  death. 
But  the  parsnip  coffee  and  the  empty  purse 
certainly  did  give  a  sting  to  the  great  over- 
whelming misery,  like  gnats  tormenting  a 
wounded  man. 

Absurd  things  happened  sometimes,  how- 
ever, and  gave  us  the  relief  of  a  laugh.  Two 
of  my  girl  friends,  for  instance,  had  a  queer 
experience.  They  lived  on  a  plantation  near 
Winchester.  The  men  of  the  family  were 
in  the  southern  army  when  that  town  was 
first  taken  by  the  Federal  troops.  Word  was 
sent  to  their  mother  that  two  Union  officers 
would  that  evening  be  quartered  on  her. 
The  girls,  in  a  panic,  with  the  help  of  an 
old  house  servant,  put  all  their  table  silver 

En?] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

and  jewels  into  boxes  which  they  buried  in 
the  barnyard.  The  supper  table  was  laid  with 
coarse  yellow  linen,  delft,  and  two-pronged 
iron  forks,  brought  from  the  kitchen. 

"  The  Yankee  thieves,"  they  boasted, 
"should  find  nothing  to  steal." 

What  was  their  dismay,  when  supper  was 
served  and  the  guests  appeared,  to  meet  two 
men  with  whom  they  had  danced  and  flirted 
the  summer  away  at  Saratoga ! 

"  What  could  we  do  ?  "  tearfully  they  said 
afterward ;  "  the  silver  was  buried  deep  in  the 
barnyard.  We  could  not  tell  them  we  had 
hid  it,  expecting  them  to  pocket  the  spoons. 
For  two  weeks  they  were  with  us,  and  went 
away,  no  doubt,  to  say  that  all  the  old  families 
of  the  South  ate  on  kitchen-ware  with  iron 
forks." 

There  was,  too,  many  a  laugh  in  the  pre- 
paration of  troops  for  action.  Regiments  of 
men  who  never  had  fired  a  gun  were  com- 
manded by  men  who  never  had  handled  a 
sword.  Farmers,  clerks,  dentists,  and  shop- 
keepers to-day — presto!  to-morrow,  soldiers  ! 
Many  a  new-made  officer  sat  up  half  the  night 

[H8] 


The  Civil  War 

to  learn  the  orders  he  must  give  in  the  morn- 
ing. One  gallant  old  officer  told  me,  "  When 
I  went  out  to  drill  my  men  I  always  had 
the  orders  written  on  my  shirt-cuff.1'  Being 
near-sighted,  he  actually,  at  Culpepper,  led 
the  wrong  regiment  in  a  charge,  leaving  his 
own  men  standing  idle. 

The  newly-made  surgeon  of  a  newly-made 
regiment  came  to  bid  us  good-by  before  going 
to  the  field.  "  Yes,"  he  said  exultantly,  "  we  're 
off  to  the  front  to-morrow.  My  men  are  ready. 
I  've  vaccinated  all  of  them,  and  given  every 
man  a  box  of  liver  pills." 

Yet  with  all  this  fever  of  preparation  we 
never  quite  believed  that  there  was  war  until, 
one  day,  a  rough  wooden  box  was  sent  down 
from  the  mountains.  A  young  officer  had 
been  killed  by  a  sharpshooter,  and  his  body 
was  forwarded  that  it  might  be  cared  for  and 
sent  to  his  friends.  He  was  a  very  handsome 
boy,  and  the  men  in  the  town  went  to  look 
at  him  and  at  the  little  purple  spot  on  his 
white  breast,  and  came  away  dull  and  sick 
at  heart.  They  did  not  ask  whether  he  had 
been  loyal  or  a  rebel. 

["9] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

"  He  was  so  young  !  He  might  have  done 
so  much ! "  they  said.   "  But  this  is  war — war ! " 

I  remember  that  in  that  same  year  I  crossed 
the  Pennsylvania  mountains  coming  to  Phila- 
delphia. It  was  a  dull,  sunless  day.  The  train 
halted  at  a  little  way  station  among  the  hills. 
Nobody  was  in  sight  but  a  poor,  thin  country 
girl,  in  a  faded  calico  gown  and  sun-bonnet. 
She  stood  alone  on  the  platform,  waiting.  A 
child  was  playing  beside  her. 

When  we  stopped  the  men  took  out  from 
the  freight  car  a  rough,  unplaned  pine  box 
and  laid  it  down,  baring  their  heads  for  a 
minute.  Then  the  train  steamed  away.  She 
sat  down  on  the  ground  and  put  her  arms 
around  the  box  and  leaned  her  head  on  it. 
The  child  went  on  playing.  So  we  left  her. 
I  never  have  seen  so  dramatic  or  significant 
a  figure. 

When  we  hear  of  thousands  of  men  killed 
in  battle  it  means  nothing  to  us.  We  forget 
it  in  an  hour.  It  is  these  little  things  that 
come  home  to  us.   When  we  remember  them 


we  say :  — 

"  That  is  war  !  " 


[  120] 


The  Civil  U^ar 

One  of  the  most  dramatic  pictures  of  the  war 
which  remains  in  my  memory  is  the  departure 
of  a  company  of  Maryland  boys  to  join  Gen- 
eral Lee.  They  left  secretly  and  at  night,  as 
the  Federal  troops  were  in  possession  of  all 
the  passes  in  the  neighborhood.  But  they  met 
in  the  evening  at  the  home  of  their  captain, 
to  receive,  before  they  went,  their  colors  from 
his  mother's  hand.  He  was  nothing  but  a 
boy  —  they  all  were  boys,  in  fact.  And  "  he 
was  the  only  son  of  his  mother,  and  she  was 
a  widow." 

It  was  a  moonlight  night,  and  the  young 
men  gathered  on  the  lawn  under  the  trees. 
When  she  came  out  on  the  high  steps  of  the 
veranda  she  carried  a  tattered  old  flag.  Her 
son  came  up  and  stood  before  her. 

"  Your  grandfather  fought  under  it  at  Val- 
ley Forge,"  she  said ;  "  he,  too,  went  to  meet 
the  invader,  and  "  —  She  had  a  little  speech 
all  ready  to  make,  but  she  broke  down  here, 
thrust  the  old  flag  into  his  hand,  crying,  "  Oh, 
Tom,  you  '11  never  come  back  to  me."  And  he 
knelt,  kissing  her  hands  and  crying  over  them, 
and  the  boys  drew  out  their  brand-new  swords 

[  I21  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

and  waved  them  about.  But  not  one  of  them 
could  cheer. 

A  month  later  I  stood  on  the  porch  of  a 
country  house  on  Staten  Island  with  Robert 
Shaw's  mother,  another  most  true  and  wo- 
manly woman,  who  had  sent  out  her  boy  at 
the  head  of  a  negro  troop.  She  showed  me 
his  watch,  shattered  by  a  bullet,  that  he  had 
sent  to  her,  after  a  battle. 

"  It  saved  his  life,"  she  said ;  "  I  think  he 
will  come  back  to  me.  But  if  he  never  comes 
back  "  —  and  her  face  glowed  and  her  eyes 
shone. 

A  few  weeks  later  he  lay  dead,  buried  be- 
neath his  black  soldiers. 

These  are  two  true  pictures.  I  know  they 
are  the  only  kind  which  this  generation  wishes 
to  see  of  the  Civil  War.  Novels  and  maga- 
zines are  rilled  nowadays  with  stories  of  gal- 
lant boys  and  noble  old  men  from  every  free 
and  every  slave  State  dying  for  the  cause  they 
loved.  We  all  like  to  think  that  that  great 
national  convulsion  was  caused  by  an  out- 
break of  pure  patriotism,  of  chivalry,  of  self- 
sacrifice  in  both  South  and  North. 

[  I22] 


The  Civil  War 

Measurably  that  is  true.  But  there  were 
phases  of  the  long  struggle  familiar  enough 
to  us  then  which  never  have  been  painted  for 
posterity.  There  were,  for  instance,  regiments 
on  both  sides  which  had  been  wholly  recruited 
from  the  jails  and  penitentiaries. 

This  class  of  the  soldiery  raged  like  wild 
beasts  through  the  mountains  of  the  border 
States.  They  burned,  they  murdered  men, 
women,  and  children,  they  cut  out  the  tongues 
of  old  men  who  would  not  answer  their  ques- 
tions. 

Again,  it  must  be  remembered  that  a  large 
number  of  men  in  both  armies  did  not,  as  we 
imagine  now,  volunteer  in  a  glow  of  patriotic 
zeal  for  an  idea  —  to  save  either  the  Union 
or  the  Confederacy  —  to  free  the  negro  or  to 
defend  state's  rights.  They  were  not  all  fer- 
vid, chivalric  Robert  Shaws  or  Robert  Lees. 
They  went  into  the  army  simply  to  earn  a 
living.  This  was  especially  true  in  the  border 
States  during  the  later  years  of  the  war.  Every 
industry,  except  those  necessary  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  army,  had  then  come  to  a  full 
stop.   The  war  was  the  sole  business  of  the 

[  i23] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

nation.  With  many  laboring  men  the  only 
choice  was  to  enlist  or  starve. 

A  large  proportion  of  recruits,  too,  during 
these  later  years  were  drafted,  and  served 
only  because  they  could  not  afford  to  pay 
for  a  substitute.  So  unwilling  then  were  the 
men  outside  of  the  army  to  go  into  it  that  if 
a  citizen  were  drafted  he  was  obliged  to  pay 
from  $400  to  $2000  bounty  for  a  man  to  be 
shot  at  in  his  place.  Substitutes  were  cheaper 
in  1864,  because  then  every  incoming  steamer 
brought  swarms  of  Germans,  Huns,  and  Irish 
to  profit  by  this  new  industry. 

We  don't  often  look  into  these  unpleasant 
details  of  our  great  struggle.  We  all  prefer 
to  think  that  every  man  who  wore  the  blue 
or  gray  was  a  Philip  Sidney  at  heart. 

These  are  sordid  facts  that  I  have  dragged 
up.  But  —  they  are  facts.  And  because  we 
have  hidden  them  our  young  people  have 
come  to  look  upon  war  as  a  kind  of  benefi- 
cent deity,  which  not  only  adds  to  the  na- 
tional honor  but  uplifts  a  nation  and  develops 
patriotism  and  courage. 

That  is  all  true.    But  it  is  only  fair,  too,  to 

[  I24] 


The  Civil  War 

let  them  know  that  the  garments  of  the  deity 
are  filthy  and  that  some  of  her  influences 
debase  and  befoul  a  people. 

There  was  one  curious  fact  which  I  do 
not  remember  ever  to  have  seen  noticed  in 
histories  of  the  war,  and  that  was  its  effect 
upon  the  nation  as  individuals.  Men  and 
women  thought  and  did  noble  and  mean 
things  that  would  have  been  impossible  to 
them  before  or  after.  A  man  cannot  drink 
old  Bourbon  long  and  remain  in  his  normal 
condition.  We  did  not  drink  Bourbon,  but 
blood.  No  matter  how  gentle  or  womanly 
we  might  be,  we  read,  we  talked,  we  thought 
perforce  of  nothing  but  slaughter.  So  many 
hundreds  dead  here,  so  many  thousands 
there,  were  our  last  thoughts  at  night  and 
the  first  in  the  morning.  The  effect  was 
very  like  that  produced  upon  a  household  in 
which  there  has  been  a  long  illness.  There 
was  great  religious  exaltation  and  much 
peevish  ill  temper.  Under  the  long,  nervous 
strain  the  softest  women  became  fierce  parti- 
sans, deaf  to  arguments  or  pleas  for  mercy. 

[  125  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Nothing  would  convince  some  of  the  most 
intellectual  women  in  New  England  that 
their  southern  sisters  were  not  all  Hecates, 
habitually  employed  in  flogging  their  slaves; 
while  Virginia  girls  believed  that  the  wives 
of  the  men  who  invaded  their  homes  were  all 
remorseless,  bloodthirsty  harpies. 

We  no  longer  gave  our  old  values  to  the 
conditions  of  life.  Our  former  ideas  of  right 
and  wrong  were  shaken  to  the  base.  The  ten 
commandments,  we  began  to  suspect,  were 
too  old-fashioned  to  suit  this  present  emer- 
gency. 

I  knew,  for  instance,  of  a  company  made 
up  of  the  sons  and  grandsons  of  old  Scotch 
Covenanters.  They  were  educated,  gallant 
young  fellows.  They  fought  bravely,  and  in 
the  field  or  in  hospital  were  kind  and  humane 
to  their  foes.  But  they  came  home,  when 
disbanded,  with  their  pockets  full  of  spoons 
and  jewelry  which  they  had  found  in  farm- 
houses looted  and  burned  on  Sherman's 
march  to  the  sea;  and  they  gayly  gave  them 
around  to  their  sweethearts  as  souvenirs  of 
the  war. 

[126] 


The  Civil  War 

The  poet,  Colonel  Paul  Hayne,  told  me 
that  after  the  war  was  over  he  had  a  letter 
from  a  man  in  New  York  stating  that  he  had 
several  pieces  of  the  Hayne  old  family  plate 
and  would  like  to  know  the  meaning  of  the 
crest  and  motto. 

11  To  the  victors  belong  the  spoils,"  was 
the  excuse  for  all  these  things. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  natural  high  ten- 
sion of  feeling  in  the  whole  nation  during 
those  years  made  noble,  heroic  deeds  easy. 
Both  armies  were  quick  to  recognize  individ- 
ual acts  of  courage  in  their  foes  and  to  be 
proud  of  them  because  they  were  done  by 
Americans. 

I  remember  that  an  old  Confederate  sol- 
dier once  told  me  of  the  death  of  Theodore 
Winthrop,  a  gallant  northern  officer,  famous 
before  the  war  began  as  the  author  of  two 
remarkable  novels. 

"Winthrop's  regiment,"  he  said,  "was 
driven  back.  But  he  would  not  be  driven 
back.  He  rushed  forward  alone  to  the  top 
of  the  hill,  sprang  upon  a  fallen  tree,  and 
waved   his   sword,  shouting   to  his  men  to 

[  127] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

follow.  They  did  not  follow.  A  dozen  bul- 
lets pierced  his  breast.  He  swung  to  and 
fro,  still  shouting.  I  never  saw  a  more  heroic 
figure.  When  he  fell  a  groan  burst  from  the 
Confederate  ranks.  It  was  the  death  of  a 
great  soldier."  And  the  tears  stood  in  his 
old  eyes,  though  many  years  had  passed  since 
he  saw  the  boy  die. 

It  may  be  that  the  glow  of  love  for  their 
country  which  on  both  sides  then  warmed 
men's  hearts  made  kindly  and  noble  deeds 
easier  to  them.  But  they  were  common 
enough  through  all  the  long  brutality  of 
slaughter. 

There  was  one  regiment,  for  instance, 
which,  after  a  battle  in  the  West  Virginia 
mountains,  near  Romney,  came  up  to  a 
burned  farmhouse ;  the  owner,  a  young 
countryman  in  a  gray  uniform,  lay  dead 
in  the  barnyard.  His  wife  crouched  beside 
him,  his  head  in  her  arms.  They  found  that 
she,  too,  was  dead,  shot  through  the  breast. 
Near  by  sat  a  boy  baby,  two  years  old,  who 
looked  into  their  faces  and  laughed.  This 
reads   like  a  cheap  story  from  the  Sunday 

[128] 


The  Civil  W^ar 

papers,  but  it  is  a  fact.  The  men  took  the 
child  with  them  and  cared  for  it  on  their 
march.  The  only  food  they  had  fit  to  give 
it  was  hard-tack,  soaked  in  milk,  and  it  throve 
and  grew  fat  on  the  queer  diet  under  the 
care  of  its  many  foster  fathers.  A  year  later 
they  brought  the  boy  to  Pittsburg  and  put 
him  into  an  orphan  asylum.  He  had  no 
name  but  Hard-Tack,  but  he  was  rich  in 
friends. 

The  hospitals,  the  care  of  the  sick  and 
wounded,  kindled  innumerable  fires  of  sym- 
pathy and  friendship  in  the  midst  of  the 
universal  enmity. 

During  those  years  of  fierce  struggle 
some  little  incident  hourly  showed  how  knit 
together  at  heart  were  the  "  two  huge  armed 
mobs,"  as  Von  Moltke  called  them,  that 
were  busy  in  slaughtering  each  other. 

I  remember  a  little  story  told  me  by 
Colonel  Thomas  Biddle,  which  will  show  you 
what  I  mean. 

The  colonel,  then  a  young  man  on  the 
staff  of  one  of  the  Federal  generals,  —  which, 
I  have  forgotten,  —  was  ordered  one  day  to 

[  I29] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

reconnoitre  the  country  lying  around  the 
camp,  which  was  near  Culpepper.  He  rode 
far  into  the  hills  until  late  in  the  afternoon, 
and,  being  hungry,  stopped  at  a  lonely  farm- 
house, tied  his  horse  to  the  fence,  and  went 
in. 

A  raw-boned  woman  welcomed  him. 

"  You  're  for  the  Union,  eh  ? "  she  said. 
"  So  are  we.  Lookin'  up  the  Secesh  troops, 
I  reckon.  No,  there  's  none  of  them  about 
hyah.    Teddy,  see  to  the  gentleman's  horse." 

A  red-headed  boy  grinned  and  disappeared. 

"  Had  no  dinner  ?  I  ken  give  yo  nothin' 
but  bread  an'  buttermilk.  But  it's  fine  butter- 
milk." 

"  If  I  have  a  weakness  for  anything  it 's 
for  buttermilk,"  the  colonel  said,  in  telling 
the  story.  "  And  this  was  fresh,  the  butter 
floating  in  yellow  flakes  on  top,  a  drink  for 
the  gods.  I  sat  and  ate  and  sipped  it  slowly, 
and  she  watched  me  with  her  beady  black 
eyes. 

"  '  Now,  whahabouts  in  the  North  do  you 
come  from  ? '  she  said. 

" '  Philadelphia.' 

[  130] 


The  Civil  War 

"  '  Oh  ! '  Her  face  changed  suddenly. 
'  Thah  's  a  hospital  thah ;  on  Cherry  Street. 
I  reckon  you  don't  know  nothin'  about  it  ? ' 
She  leaned  over  the  table,  her  face  keen 
and  eager. 

"  '  Of  course  I  know  it,'  I  said.  '  I  used  to 
go  there  often.  It  cheers  the  boys  up  for 
somebody  to  look  in  on  them.' 

"  Her  eyes  glittered  with  excitement. 
'  Thah 's  other  boys  than  Yankees  thah. 
Secesh ;  them  as  is  wounded.  My  son 's 
thah  ;  he  lost  one  leg.' 

"  '  What 's  your  son's  name  ? ' 

"  '  Name  of  Briscoe.' 

"  '  Jem  Briscoe  ?  A  long-jawed,  lean  fel- 
low, with  red  hair  ? ' 

" '  Thet  's  Jem,'  she  leaned,  panting,  over 
the  table.  c  Foh  God's  sake !  You  seen 
Jem?' 

"'Yes,'  I  said,  'and  liked  him.  I  used  to 
bring  him  tobacco  sometimes  and  such 
trifles'— 

"  She  sprang  at  me  and  fairly  dragged  me 
to  my  feet. 

"  '  You  knew  Jem  ?   You  've  been  good  to 

[•so 


Bits  of  Gossip 

him  !  An'  I  've  brought  the  men  on  you ! 
Go  !  Foh  God's  sake !  They  '11  shoot  you 
for  a  spy  —  go  !    Thah  they  are ! ' 

"  I  looked  out  of  the  window.  A  dozen 
mounted  men  were  galloping  up  through 
the  gorge. 

"  I  rushed  out  of  the  house,  threw  myself 
on  my  horse,  and  dashed  down  the  glen.  I 
heard  her  yell :  — 

"  •  I  did  n't  know  !  Oh,  make  haste  !  Foh 
God's  sake  ! ' 

"  I  drew  my  pistols  from  the  holster,  but 
they  were  dripping  wet.  Teddy  had  seen  to 
that  before  he  warned  the  rebels,  whose  camp 
was  just  behind  the  hill. 

"  Well,  it  was  a  hard  race,  but  I  won  it. 
They  fired  a  dozen  bullets  after  me.  I  had 
good  luck  and  reached  the  camp.  It 's  queer, 
but  from  that  day  to  this  I  can't  taste  butter- 
milk without  a  sick  qualm  at  the  stomach." 

This  story,  too,  sounds  like  a  bit  out  of  a 
novel.  But  I  give  it  exactly  as  the  colonel 
told  it  to  me. 

There  was  another  curious  incident  which 
I  know  to  be  true  in  every  detail. 

[  132  ] 


The  Civil  War 

A  young  man  named  Carroll  enlisted  in  a 
Michigan  regiment  which,  the  next  day,  was 
ordered  to  Virginia.  He  had  no  kinsfolk  but 
a  sister,  a  young  girl,  who  was  neither  mad 
nor  an  idiot,  but  was  what  the  kindly  Irish 
call  "  innocent."  They  believe  that  such  half- 
witted, harmless  folk  are  under  the  especial 
guardianship  of  God. 

When  Ellen  was  told  that  her  brother  had 
gone  to  the  war,  she  followed  him  as  a  matter 
of  course. 

"  Why,  Joe  could  n't  get  along  in  those 
strange  countries  without  me,"  she  said. 
"  Who  would  cook  for  him,  or  take  care  of 
him  ?  " 

She  had  but  a  few  dollars,  and  soon  lost 
them  in  the  cars.  She  carried  nothing  with 
her  but  a  little  bag  filled  with  Joe's  neckties 
and  bits  of  finery  which  she  thought  he  would 
need. 

"  I  will  see  him  to-morrow,  and  he  will  buy 
me  clothes  and  all  I  want  there,"  she  said. 

This  pretty,  innocent  girl  traveled  in  safety 
thousands  of  miles,  alone  and  penniless,  and 
when  she  reached  the  Virginia  mountains, 

[  133] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

wandered  on  foot  from  camp  to  camp,  search- 
ing for  her  brother,  always  safe  and  un- 
harmed. 

In  the  universal  hurly-burly  and  overturn 
of  order  in  the  country,  all  kinds  of  eccentric 
folk  rushed  into  notice  to  fill  the  public  eye 
for  the  moment  and  then  to  disappear.  Every 
day  brought  a  new  preacher  who  had  gone  up 
to  heavenly  places  the  night  before,  and  who 
could  give  us  the  exact  opinion  of  Washington 
or  Moses  or  St.  Paul  upon  the  war  and  its 
probable  ending. 

Men  and  women  whose  eccentric  ideas  had 
been  smothered  hitherto,  now  blazoned  them 
forth  unchecked ;  or,  if  they  had  a  gift  for 
leadership  or  organization  or  for  making 
money,  the  field,  the  spectators,  and  the  re- 
ward all  now  were  ready  for  them. 

I  knew  one  lad  of  sixteen  who  had  saved, 
dime  by  dime,  a  couple  of  hundred  dollars. 
When  father  and  brothers  were  rushing,  guns 
in  hand,  to  the  battlefield,  he  sat  down  to 
calculate  how  he  could  invest  his  money  pro- 
fitably. 

"  What  is  there  in  the  South  that  will  be 

[134] 


The  Civil  W^ar 

kept  out  of  the  northern  market  by  the  war  ?  " 
he  questioned. 

Turpentine !    The  idea  was  an  inspiration. 

He  hurried  out,  spent  every  penny  in  tur- 
pentine, stored  it  for  four  years,  and  with 
the  profits  laid  the  foundation  of  a  huge 
fortune. 

A  townsman  of  the  turpentine  lad  had  not 
his  idea  of  glory.  He  was  the  scampish  fel- 
low of  the  town.  No  family  nor  church  ever 
fathered  or  trained  him.  He  made  up  his 
mind  to  take  part  in  the  war,  single-handed. 
He  had  a  good  horse  and  got  a  commission 
as  colonel  from  the  Confederacy,  donned  the 
gray  uniform,  and  rode  through  the  Virginia 
border,  leaving  a  trail  of  terror  behind  him. 
At  last,  in  Moundsville,  on  the  Ohio,  he  met  a 
little  Federal  captain  who  had  brought  down 
$20,000  to  pay  the  troops  of  the  Mountain 
Department,  and  was  talking  about  it  too 
loudly.  Jem  held  up  the  little  man,  took  his 
money,  turned  it  into  the  southern  treasury, 
and,  worst  of  all,  sent  the  poor  boy  home  on 
parole,  to  fight  no  more  for  his  country. 

Another  singular  feature  of  the  war,  which 

[  135  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

I  think  nobody  has  described,  was  the  hope- 
less confusion  which  followed  its  close.  When 
Johnny  came  marching  home  again  he  was 
a  very  disorganized  member  of  society,  and 
hard  to  deal  with.  You  cannot  take  a  man 
away  from  his  work  in  life,  whether  that  be 
selling  sugar,  practicing  law,  or  making  shoes, 
and  set  him  to  march  and  fight  for  five  years, 
without  turning  his  ideas  and  himself  topsy- 
turvy. 

The  older  men  fell  back  into  the  grooves 
more  readily  than  the  lads,  who  had  been 
fighting,  when,  in  ordinary  times,  they  would 
have  been  plodding  through  Cicero  or  alge- 
bra. Some  of  them  harked  back  to  college 
to  gather  up  the  knowledge  they  had  missed ; 
some  of  them  took  up  awkwardly  the  tools  of 
their  trades,  and  some  of  them  took  to  drink 
and  made  an  end  of  it.  The  social  complica- 
tions of  the  readjustment  were  endless  and 
droll. 

I  remember  that  a  friend  of  mine,  a  vener- 
able, gray-haired  college  professor,  when  hear- 
ing a  class  of  freshmen  at  the  beginning  of 
the  term  in  1866,  was  struck  by  the  peculiar 

[136] 


The  Civil  War 

hoarse  voice  of  a  boy  from  the  South.  When 
the  class  was  over,  he  said  to  him,  "  I  beg  your 
pardon,  but  do  you  know  Cato's  Soliloquy  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sah,"  the  lad  said,  blushing.  "  It  is 
my  favorite  recitation." 

"  Do  you  remember  that  two  years  ago  you 
were  detailed  to  guard  a  sheep-pen  in  a  Texan 
camp  in  which  were  some  Yankee  prisoners  ? 
It  was  a  moonlight  night,  and  as  you  marched 
up  and  down  you  thundered  out :  — 

'  Plato,  thou  reasonest  well, 
Else  why  this  pleasing  doubt ' "  — 

"  I  've  no  doubt  I  did,"  said  the  Texan. 
"  But  how  —   Where  were  you,  sah  ?  " 

"  Oh,"  said  the  old  doctor,  "  /  was  in  the 
pen." 

The  effervescence  simmered  down  at  last. 
Men  standing  up  as  targets  to  be  shot  at 
were  all  of  one  height,  but  in  peace  each 
gradually  found  his  level  again. 

The  abolition  of  slavery  is  the  only  result 
of  this  great  war  which  we  recognize.  But 
there  were  other  consequences  almost  as  mo- 
mentous. 

[  137] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

The  first  huge  fortunes  in  this  country 
were  made  by  army  contractors  in  the  North 
during  the  wan 

The  birth  of  the  millionaire  among  us,  and 
the  disease  of  money-getting  with  which  he 
has  infected  the  nation,  is  not  usually  reck- 
oned among  the  results  of  the  great  struggle. 
But  it  was  a  result,  and  is  quite  as  important 
a  factor  in  our  history  as  is  the  liberation  of 
the  negro. 

Another  more  wholesome  effect  of  the  long 
quarrel  was  oddly  enough  that  it  made  of  us 
a  homogeneous  people,  which  we  never  had 
been  before.  The  Pennsylvania  Dutchman 
and  the  Californian  learned  to  know  each 
other  as  they  sat  over  the  camp-fire  at  night, 
and  when  the  war  was  over  they  knew  the 
Southerner  better  and  liked  him  more  than 
they  had  done  before  they  set  out  to  kill 
him. 

Another  good  result  was,  that  while  the  five 
years  of  idle  camp  life  and  slaughter  made  a 
sot  of  many  a  coarse-grained,  stupid  boy,  and 
a  pauper  for  life  of  the  man  willing  to  take 
alms  from  the  country  to  whom  he  once  gave 

[  '38  ] 


The  Civil  War 

paid  service,  it  uplifted  the  whole  lives  of  such 
men  as  went  into  it  with  a  noble  purpose. 

When  it  was  over,  the  farmer,  the  sales- 
man, the  shoemaker,  took  up  the  dull  burden 
of  his  workaday  life  again,  and  carries  it  still. 

But  he  never  forgets  that  for  five  years 
he,  too,  was  Achilles  —  of  the  race  of  heroes. 
The  fact  that  for  one  mile  in  his  long  journey 
he  worked,  not  for  money,  but  for  a  great  idea, 
must  be  for  him  always  a  helpful  and  uplift- 
ing memory. 


[  139] 


VI 
THE   SHIPWRECKED   CREW 

I  must  plead  guilty  to  a  liking  for  those  dis- 
reputable folk,  the  half-starved,  scampish  ad- 
venturers who  haunt  the  outer  edge  of  the 
fields  of  literature  and  journalism ;  for  these 
fields  march  together  now  and  the  fence  be- 
tween them  is  almost  broken  down. 

Your  real  geniuses  —  the  accredited  rulers 
in  these  demesnes  —  are  not  always  people 
with  whom  you  can  fellowship.  You  stare  at 
them,  or  save  their  autographs,  but  you  don't 
ask  them  home  to  dinner  or  to  go  a-fishing  with 
you  for  a  long  July  day.  One  reason  is,  that 
many  of  these  important  folk  have  been  too 
long  aware  that  the  public  eye  is  upon  them, 
and  their  self-consciousness  covers  their  real 
selves  as  would  mask  and  domino.  Who  can 
blame  them  ?  How  can  any  man  be  his  real 
self  or  indulge  in  any  lovable,  foolish  capers 
when  he  knows  that  a  dozen  reporters  of  the 

[  Ho] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

Sunday  papers  are  focusing  their  cameras 
upon  him  ? 

Another  reason  is  that  you  yourself  have 
illusions  about  these  men  of  genius.  They  are 
not  always  on  the  tripod,  and  you  resent  it 
when  you  see  them  off  of  it.  A  poet  has 
sung  to  you  like  the  lark  at  heaven's  gate, 
and  when  you  meet  him  he  is  babbling  of  his 
cook  and  of  a  new  sauce  for  crabs.  Or  you 
meet  that  famous  novelist  whose  book  was 
one  of  the  successes  of  last  century,  and  he 
talks  to  you  by  the  hour  of  his  own  incompar- 
able genius,  and  assures  you  gravely  that  he 
has  put  Scott  and  Thackeray  to  shame.  Or 
you  are  asked  to  dine  with  the  woman  whose 
songs  have  reached  dark  places  in  your  heart, 
which  you  thought  were  known  only  to  you 
and  to  God,  and  she  giggles  in  her  talk,  and 
uses  perfume,  and  poses  even  while  she  eats, 
as  a  conscious  Sappho. 

Now,  it  hurts  you  to  see  these  priests  of 
Apollo  thus  stripped  of  their  proper  gleam- 
ing vestments  and  going  about  in  such  cheap 
clothes.  Their  every-day  dullness  or  under- 
breeding  makes  you  forget  their  inspired  mo- 

[  141  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

merits,  and  you  end  by  ungratefully  denying 
the  help  which  they  actually  have  given  to 
you. 

It  is  a  good  rule  never  to  see  or  talk  to  the 
man  whose  words  have  wrung  your  heart,  or 
helped  it,  just  as  it  is  wise  not  to  look  down 
too  closely  at  the  luminous  glow  which  some- 
times shines  on  your  path  on  a  summer  night, 
if  you  would  not  see  the  ugly  worm  below. 

But  the  poor  unknown  scribbler  outside  of 
the  gates  of  literature  has  no  reputation  to 
keep  up.  He  need  not  pose.  Nobody  mistakes 
his  old  hat  for  a  halo.  You  have  no  illusions 
about  him ;  nothing  that  he  can  do  will  dis- 
appoint you.  He  can  afford  to  be  his  own 
tricky,  fascinating  self. 

Although  there  are  scores  of  biographies 
and  portraits  of  our  American  Immortals,  the 
famous  folk  who  publish  books  and  draw  royal- 
ties and  write  autographs  for  church  fairs,  no- 
body has  sketched  those  uneasy,  unsuccessful 
ghosts  who  haunt  the  gates  and  hedges  of  the 
scribbling  world ;  always  outside,  yet  always 
hoping  to  enter  in.  I  must  tell  you  of  one  or 
two  of  them  whom  I  have  known. 

[  142  ] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

I  remember  a  chubby  schoolgirl  of  sixteen, 
who  once  brought  to  me  the  manuscripts  of 
several  philosophic  essays  which  she  wished 
to  have  published  "  at  oncer 

"  What  was  your  object  in  writing  them  ?  " 
I  asked,  to  gain  time. 

"  Partly,"  she  said  sententiously,  "  to  make 
a  large  sum  of  money,  and  partly  to  improve 
the  age." 

Few  of  these  queer  folk,  however,  have  both 
of  these  motives.  They  either  mean  to  wring 
a  living  out  of  the  public  or  they  propose  to 
reform  it,  with  the  fervor  of  the  apostles  and 
as  firm  a  faith  in  their  own  genius  as  ever 
martyr  had  in  his  God. 

One  of  this  last  class  was  a  woman  from 
the  mountains  of  Georgia  who  called  on  me 
one  winter's  day  years  ago.  She  was  lean  and 
crippled,  and  talked  with  the  broad  negro 
inflections  of  the  quarters. 

But  she  had  escaped  from  the  mountains. 
She  had  reached  a  city.  She  was  on  her  way 
to  storm  Olympus,  and  had  put  on  her  best 
gown  for  the  adventure,  a  faded  green  silk 
decorated  with  bows  of  washed  yellow  ribbon. 

[143] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

She  pulled  at  them  nervously  as  she  looked 
at  me  with  excited  pale  eyes,  her  jaws  twitch- 
ing. 

"  I  am  on  my  way  to  New  York,"  she  began 
at  once.  "  I  mean  to  go  into  the  profession 
of  authorship  there.  I  expected  to  be  paid 
some  money  here  in  Philadelphia  for  a  poem 
of  mine  which  was  printed  in  the  '  Church 
Lamp.'  But  when  I  arrive  here,  I  find  the 
'  Church  Lamp '  has  not  been  published  for  a 
year.  It  has  gone  out !  No  office,  no  editors, 
no  '  Lamp ' !  No  money  for  me  !  And  I 
have  no  money  —  none  at  all ;  "  waving  her 
empty  hands  and  laughing.  "  I  thought  that 
perhaps  authors  had  a  guild  —  a  beneficial 
society  to  help  each  other  with  loans  ?  "  — 

I  quickly  assured  her  that  I  never  had 
heard  of  such  a  league,  and  asked  her  how 
she  proposed  to  carry  on  life  in  New  York 
with  no  money  at  all.    Why  not  go  home  ? 

"  Home !  "  she  said.  "  Turn  back !  Why ! 
I  am  an  authoress.  You  don't  understand," 
she  explained  patiently,  tapping  the  sides  of 
a  little  satchel.  "  Poems !  "  she  whispered, 
nodding  with  shining  eyes. 

[  144] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

I  hinted  that  New  York  editors  did  not 
stand  upon  their  doorsteps  with  money  in 
their  hands  waiting  for  poems.  But  she 
smiled  at  my  ignorance. 

"You  forget  that  I  am  not  an  ordinary 
authoress,"  she  said  quietly.  "  I  have  been 
preparing  for  this  for  many  years.  I  have 
great  power.  I  have  genius.  Everybody 
in  our  county  will  tell  you  that.  I  have 
genius.  I  have  several  of  my  best  poems 
here  ;  "  and  again  she  touched  the  old  satchel. 

Well  —  remonstrance  was  useless.  She 
went  to  New  York,  and  no  word  or  sign 
came  back  from  her. 

Years  afterward  I  spent  an  evening  with 
Mrs.  Ann  S.  Stephens  —  the  Scheherazade 
of  her  generation,  and  probably  the  kindest 
woman  in  it.  We  were  talking  of  the  queer 
folk  who  followed  her  craft.  I  told  her  of 
the  Georgian  poetess.  Her  face  flushed,  but 
she  said  nothing.  But  a  friend  who  was 
dining  with  us  exclaimed :  "  Why,  that  is 
Inez  Black.  She  is  living  with  Mrs.  Stephens 
now !  She  was  invited  to  luncheon  one  day 
a  year  ago  and  she  never  went  away  !  " 

[  145  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

"  Inez  Black  undoubtedly  is  a  genius ! " 
said  Mrs.  Stephens,  her  white  curls  shaking 
nervously. 

"  Inez  Black  undoubtedly  is  a  humbug  !  " 
said  her  friend. 

To  this  day  I  don't  know  which  of  them 
was  right. 

There  was  no  such  doubt  with  regard  to 
Fraulein  Crescenz  Wittkampf,  a  fat,  fair, 
pink-cheeked  German  who  once  descended 
upon  us.  She  was  one  of  those  modern 
women  who  are  ready  to  seize  the  occasion 
—  to  seize  any  occasion  by  the  bridle,  mount 
it  and  ride  it  to  victory. 

Some  good  nuns  in  a  convent  in  Alsace 
near  the  hut  where  she  was  born  had  recog- 
nized this  power  in  the  child,  and  taught  her 
other  things  than  embroidery  —  among  the 
rest,  English.  When  she  was  in  her  twen- 
ties there  was  a  World's  Fair  in  Paris.  She 
went  to  it  as  saleswoman  of  some  work  of 
the  Sisters.  While  there  she  quickly  made 
friends.  One  of  them,  an  Englishwoman, 
offered  her  fair  wages  to  go  to  India  as 
nurse  and  companion  to  the  daughter  of  an 
[146] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

English  officer  stationed  in  Bombay.  The 
girl  was  a  child  of  twelve.  Crescenz  rejoiced 
at  her  good  luck  and  set  sail  with  her  charge. 
Not  until  they  were  two  days  out  at  sea  did 
she  discover  that  the  child  was  subject  to 
violent  paroxysms  of  madness.  However, 
when  she  reached  Bombay  she  was  mistress 
of  the  girl  and  of  the  situation.  She  remained 
in  India  long  enough  to  concoct  a  book 
made  up  of  her  imaginary  dealings  with 
Catholics  and  Hindus.  It  was  highly  seasoned 
with  horrors  and  indecencies,  but  it  had  a 
religious  title  and  was  a  savage  attack  upon 
the  followers  of  the  Pope  and  of  Buddha. 

Crescenz  reaped  a  good  harvest  from  it. 
She  was  expert,  too,  in  making  friends  with 
notable  people,  —  statesmen,  popular  preach- 
ers, millionaires,  and  fashionable  women. 
Something  in  her  round,  innocent  face,  her 
China-blue  eyes  and  her  childish  gurgle 
went  to  the  hearts  of  most  women  and  all 
men.  They  almost  always  gave  her  presents, 
usually  in  money.  When  they  did  not  give 
she  would  begin  to  chatter  of  another  book 
which  she  was  writing,  "  Glimpses  of  Life  in 

[  H7] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

the  Great  Republic,"  and  the  personal  anec- 
dotes with  which  she  would  season  it.  "  A 
little  dingy,  some  of  them.  But  for  the  sake 
of  art,  one  must  use  one's  friends,  eh  ? " 
They  would  laugh  uneasily  and  call  her 
"  a  flighty,  inconsequent  child ;  but  not 
vicious  ?  Surely,  not  vicious  ?  "  But  they 
always  gave  her  money,  to  be  safe. 

No  doubt  the  little  rose-tinted  girl  was  at 
heart  a  blackmailer,  rending  her  prey  for  her 
food,  merciless  as  a  wolf. 

But  there  are  drops  of  red  blood  under  even 
the  wolf's  hide. 

One  of  our  good  friends,  years  ago,  was 
Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  who,  more  than  any  other 
American  writer,  fed  the  young  people  of  the 
States  through  his  prose  and  verse  with  the 
distilled  essence  of  common-sense.  He  had 
incessant  disputes  with  me  about  almsgiving, 
I  upholding  the  ancient  lax  methods  of  the 
good  Samaritan,  who,  out  of  his  own  pocket, 
helped  the  man  fallen  by  the  wayside,  not  in- 
quiring too  closely  as  to  his  character.  The 
Doctor  maintained  vehemently  that  all  alms 
should  be  given  through  the  agents  of  the 

[i48] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

Organized  Charity  Boards,  and  then  only 
after  close  examination,  to  those  whom  they 
found  worthy.  Hence  I  laughed  a  little  one 
day  when  I  received  a  letter  from  him  inclos- 
ing a  large  cheque,  and  asking  me  to  call  on 
a  Mrs.  Lamb  who  had  written  to  him  from 
Philadelphia,  a  widow  with  four  children, 
starving  in  a  hovel,  who  had,  she  said,  once 
sung  with  him  in  a  choir  in  Springfield.  "  I 
don't  remember  her,"  he  said,  "  but  no  doubt 
she  tells  the  truth.  Will  you  see  her,  and  if 
you  think  it  right  give  her  this  and  let  me 
know  what  more  ought  to  be  done  for  her  ?  " 
I  found  the  house  to  which  she  directed 
him  to  be  no  hovel,  but  one  of  a  row  of  high 
showy  dwellings  near  Logan  Square.  The 
Quaker  town  of  late  years  has  filled  up 
with  these  sham  fashionable  houses.  A  film 
of  brownstone  hid  the  brick  front,  wooden 
towers  rose  above  the  eaves,  the  tiny  hall  was 
chocked  by  a  huge  imitation  bronze  Her- 
cules, with  a  cotton-lace  shade  on  his  back, 
holding  a  lamp.  Just  as  I  reached  the  house 
a  smartly  dressed  nursemaid  brought  a  baby- 
wagon  down  the  steps.   A  chubby,  blue-eyed 

[  149] 


Bits'  of  Gossip 

child  of  three  years  looked  out  smiling  from 
the  fluffs  of  white  chiffon  and  rose  silk.  An 
old,  lean  woman  in  a  soiled  print  gown,  with 
no  collar,  an  untidy  wisp  of  gray  hair  knot- 
ted up  on  her  head,  anxiously  helped  the 
nurse  carry  down  the  wagon,  and  watched 
the  baby  out  of  sight  with  an  eager  glow  of 
delight  on  her  face.    Then  she  turned  to  me. 

"  A  very  pretty  baby !  "  I  said. 

"  Yes."  She  had  the  sharp,  furtive  eyes  of 
a  rat  watching  its  enemy.  But  they  softened 
a  little.   "  It 's  mine,"  she  added. 

"  Yes.  And  you  are  Mrs.  Lamb  ?  I  have  a 
letter  of  yours  which  I  have  come  to  answer. 
To  Doctor  Holland." 

"  Holland  ?  Oh  — yes.  Come  in."  She  stared 
at  me  perplexed  and  whispered  to  herself  as 
we  went  up  the  steps. 

Afterward  I  understood  her  perplexity. 
She  was  a  begging  letter  writer  by  profession 
and  sent  off*  dozens  of  appeals  a  day  to  pro- 
minent people  whose  names  she  found  in  the 
newspapers.  Who  was  "  Holland,"  and  which 
story  had  she  told  him  ? 

She  ushered  me  into  a  room  in  which  a 

[•so] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

fat,  bloated  young  man  was  lolling  on  a 
sofa.  "  This  is  my  husband,"  she  said,  "  Mr. 
Augustus  Lamb.  He  is  a  sculptor.  You 
may  have  heard  of  him  ?  " 

Augustus  threw  down  his  torn  novel  and 
glanced  uneasily  at  the  breakfast  tray  beside 
him  and  the  unmade  bed  in  the  next  room. 
"  Yes,  ma'am,  I  'm  a  sculptor.  But  I  '11  turn 
my  hands  to  any  kind  of  honest  work. 
Except,"  —  slapping  his  thigh  and  glaring  at 
me  defiantly,  —  "  except  one.  I  '11  never  be  a 
bartender.   I  '11  starve.    But  I  '11  not  tend  bar." 

"  Yes,  yes,  Augustus  !  "  said  his  wife.  "  Go 
out,  now.  This  lady  wants  to  see  me  alone." 

"  Certainly,  Cora,  if  I  'm  not  wanted  "  — 
and  he  put  on  his  high  hat  and  swaggered 
out. 

I  need  not  linger  over  the  story  which  I 
learned  then  and  afterward.  Cora  Lamb  was 
probably  the  most  successful  beggar  by  let- 
ters in  this  country.  She  had  carried  on  the 
trade  for  years.  She  had  married  this  man  — 
who  was  young  enough  to  be  her  son  —  and 
supported  him.  They  both  were  drunkards, 
swindlers,  and  thieves.  But  their  love  for  their 

[i5>] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

child  was  genuine.  I  think  each  of  them 
meant  to  keep  her  (it  was  a  little  girl,  Mary 
Regina)  away  from  the  other,  that  she  might 
grow  up  innocent  and  pure. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  Dr.  Holland's 
cheque  was  returned  to  him.  But  I  was  inter- 
ested in  the  Lambs  and  kept  a  distant  watch 
on  them. 

A  month  later  Mrs.  Lamb  was  arrested  for 
swindling.  The  charge  was  not  proven,  but 
while  she  was  in  Moyamensing,  Augustus 
took  all  the  money  she  had  and  the  child, 
and  decamped.  She  followed  him,  found  them 
in  a  hotel  in  Chicago,  attacked  and  stabbed 
him  and  escaped  with  the  baby.  Then  the 
Lambs  became  a  valuable  property  of  the  re- 
porters. Augustus  brought  suit  for  the  child, 
and  when  the  courts  gave  her  to  him,  man- 
aged to  elude  his  wife  and  placed  the  baby  in 
an  institution  near  New  York. 

The  rest  of  the  matter  is  too  ghastly  for  me 
to  linger  to  make  a  dramatic  story  out  of  it. 
The  half-crazed  woman  raced  over  the  coun- 
try looking  for  her  baby,  and  at  the  end  of  a 
year  found  her.    She  obtained  admission  into 

[152] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

the  institution  as  a  servant,  and  at  last  escaped 
with  the  little  girl  and  took  passage  on  a 
Sound  boat  for  New  London.  There  was  a 
heavy  fog  that  night,  the  boat  collided  with 
another  and  sank,  and  hundreds  of  lives  were 
lost.  My  readers  will  no  doubt  remember  the 
incident,  for  the  country  shuddered  with  hor- 
ror at  the  accounts  of  it,  and  of  the  corpses 
which  covered  the  waves  when  the  sun  rose. 
Among  them  was  that  of  an  old  woman.  She 
had  tied  a  child  upon  her  breast,  so  that  it 
sat  upon  her  dead  body  as  upon  a  raft,  and 
so  was  saved. 

So  that  was  the  end  of  my  poor  swindler 
friend,  Cora.  Little  Mary  Regina,  when  they 
untied  her,  cried  to  go  back  to  her  mother, 
and  sat  down  on  the  beach  beside  her  again, 
patting  and  kissing  her  cold  face.  Her  father 
claimed  her  and  gave  her  again  into  the 
charge  of  the  good  sisters. 

But  in  the  ragged,  attractive  regiment  of 
Disreputables  that  I  have  known,  the  most 
attractive,  and  the  most  ragged  as  to  morals, 
was  Evangeline  Gaspare. 

Compared  with  other  women  of  her  profes- 

[■53] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

sion,  she  was  a  Napoleon  among  militiamen, 
a  Salvini  among  barn-stormers.  She  preyed 
upon  organizations,  not  individuals,  and  so 
masterly  were  her  tricks  that  even  her  victims 
paid  her  a  grudging  homage.  When  she  op- 
erated in  England,  the  "  Times  "  and  "  Sat- 
urday Review  "  in  leading  articles  anxiously 
warned  the  public  against  the  Queen  of  Adven- 
turers, as  if  she  were  a  new  pestilence  which 
was  creeping  into  the  country. 

And  who  was  Evangeline  Gaspare  ?  Ah, 
who  ever  knew  ?  The  pastor  of  a  wealthy 
church  in  New  York  believed  her  to  be  the 
Irish  widow  of  an  Italian  prince,  a  devout 
little  Protestant  whose  only  hope  was  to  res- 
cue her  boy  from  the  hold  of  his  uncle,  who 
was  a  cardinal,  and  to  fit  him  for  the  Presby- 
terian ministry.  This  church  supplied  her 
regularly  with  funds. 

Mr.  Moody  believed  her  to  be  a  zealous- 
Methodist  detailed  by  certain  Dissenters  in 
England  to  report  his  work  in  this  country. 
She  followed  him  around  over  the  States, 
and  for  months  in  his  great  mass  meetings  a 
little  woman  in  gray  was  conspicuous.    Some 

[  J54] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

of  my  readers  may  remember  her.  She  sat 
near  Mr.  Sankey  and  sang  the  old  hymns  with 
a  voice  pathetic  as  Scalchi's,  and  a  rapt,  lovely 
face  —  often  with  tears.  The  newspaper  re- 
porters in  Philadelphia  knew  her  as  the  regu- 
lar correspondent  of  the  "  London  News." 
They  made  a  comrade  of  her,  gave  her  tickets 
to  the  theatres,  heaped  Christmas  gifts  on  the 
boy.  She  used  to  ask  them  to  gay  little  sup- 
pers, and  sang  drinking  songs  to  them  as 
fervently  as  hymns ;  being  quite  in  earnest 
in  both. 

But  Madame  Gaspare  did  not  drink,  and 
was  as  chaste  as  ice.  The  whole  of  the  seven 
devils  seldom  enter  into  one  woman.  Evan- 
geline led  no  man  into  vice.  But  she  told 
each  of  these  young  fellows  confidentially 
the  name  of  the  noble  English  family  to  which 
her  husband  had  belonged,  and  the  story  of 
the  suit  now  pending  to  establish  her  son's 
claim  to  title  and  estates,  and  stripped  the 
credulous  boys  of  every  dollar  that  they  could 
raise,  to  pay  her  lawyers. 

The  weakness  of  the  little  woman  was 
that  the  credulity  of  her  victims  soon  bored 

[■55] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

her.  She  yawned  in  their  faces  and  threw  up 
each  successful  scheme  to  try  another. 

In  Washington,  one  winter,  she  held  a 
salon  which  was  frequented  by  the  ultra 
friends  of  the  negro  in  Congress.  So  fervent 
was  her  zeal  for  the  Freedman  that  she 
delivered  for  his  benefit  a  public  eulogy  on 
Charles  Sumner,  then  just  dead,  and  in  the 
fresh  glow  of  its  great  success  advanced  on 
Philadelphia  to  be  adopted  and  caressed  by 
the  kindly  Quaker  Abolitionists  of  that  city. 
This  adventure  paid  more  in  honor  than  in 
money,  and  during  the  winter  of  1875  poor 
Evangeline  sometimes  was  hungry. 

It  was  then  that  I  first  saw  her.  An  old 
clergyman  sent  her  to  me,  introducing  her  as 
"  a  pious  woman  who  had  done  noble  work 
for  the  Freedmen.  In  her  temporary  embar- 
rassment, I  probably  could  suggest  some  em- 
ployment," etc.,  etc.  I  found  a  little  woman 
waiting  for  me  who,  in  the  first  instant,  made 
a  singular  impression  of  good-breeding  and 
candor.  She  wore  a  simple,  perfectly  made 
gray  dress  and  hat. 

"  Doctor  G has  told  you  about  me  ? " 

['56] 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

she  said,  in  a  low  voice.  It  was  an  unusual 
voice,  with  a  pleading  note  in  it  that  reached 
your  heart,  as  if  a  hurt  child  or  a  cripple 
spoke.  "  I  am  in  a  temporary  strait.  And  he 
suggests  that  I  shall  —  knit  men's  socks  !  " 

She  looked  at  me,  her  dark  blue  eyes 
gleaming  with  fun.  One's  heart  warmed  at 
sight  to  the  innocent  face  —  the  candid  eyes, 
the  trembling  lips. 

"  Is  n't  he  droll  ?  "  she  said,  holding  out  her 
hands.   "  Fancy  me  knitting  men's  socks  !  " 

I  saw  Evangeline  Gaspare  many  times 
after  that,  knowing  what  she  was.  But  the 
honest,  confiding  eyes  and  sensitive  mouth 
never  lost  their  power  over  me,  woman 
though  I  was. 

In  the  straits  that  followed  during  that 
winter  she  robbed  a  certain  Mr.  Smith  of  a 
small  sum  of  money,  and  was  found  out.  But 
her  eyes  and  voice  had  power  enough  over 
Smith's  kind  heart  to  induce  him  to  with- 
draw the  charge  against  her. 

On  the  opening  of  the  Centennial  Expo- 
sition, in  May,  some  of  her  friends  in  the 
Senate  came  up  and  took  her  with  them  to 

[157] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

the  little  high  platform  on  which  stood  the 
most  distinguished  guests.  Now,  poor  Mr. 
Smith,  as  it  happened,  was  among  the  crowd 
of  nameless  folk  below  who  were  driven  back 
by  the  police  from  even  the  outer  court. 
What  was  his  rage  on  looking  up  to  see 
Madame  Gaspare,  in  an  exquisite  costume, 
standing  aloft,  beaming  with  smiles,  beside 
the  Emperor  of  Brazil  and  General  Grant ! 

He  lost  all  control  of  himself  and  shouted: 
"  Send  that  thief  down !  She  robbed  me  of 
twenty  dollars !  " 

Evangeline's  eyes  did  not  blench,  nor  her 
quiet  voice  falter.  But  in  a  moment  she  dis- 
appeared and  this  country  knew  her  no  more. 

Three  years  later  the  English  papers  con- 
tained an  account  of  the  death  of  Admiral 

,  aged  seventy,  who  had  bequeathed  the 

whole  of  his  personal  property  to  his  adopted 
daughter,  Evangeline  Gaspare,  "  the  orphan 
child  of  Ralph  Gaspare,  an  Irish  captain  who 
had  lost  his  life  in  the  American  Civil  War, 
a  volunteer  in  the  southern  cause." 

The  heirs  brought  suit  to  break  the  will. 
They  broke  it ;  they  searched  out  the  little 

[  158  3 


The  Shipwrecked  Crew 

woman's  history,  producing  the  dead  husband, 
and  the  living  son,  whom  she  had  comfortably 
hidden  in  a  school  in  Switzerland. 

Evangeline  was  tried  for  perjury.  The  rank 
of  the  contestants,  the  infatuation  of  the  poor 
old  admiral,  and  the  singular  beauty  and 
charm  of  the  prisoner,  made  of  the  case  a  cause 
celebre.  Twice  during  the  trial  Evangeline 
started  up  and  made  impassioned  appeals  to 
the  judge.  He  was  English  and  slow  of  ap- 
prehension and  of  tongue.  Before  she  could 
be  silenced,  the  innocent  eyes  and  wonderful 
voice  had  done  their  work.  She  was  found 
guilty,  but  sentenced  to  only  two  years'  im- 
prisonment. The  English  newspapers  jeered 
at  her  for  her  stupidity  in  keeping  her  lub- 
berly son  almost  within  sight  while  she  played 
her  desperate  game,  and  for  her  obstinate  re- 
fusal to  become  the  wife  of  the  old  admiral. 

Three  years  later  I  saw  in  the  report  of  a 
Southampton  police  court  that  Evangeline 
Gaspare  had  been  arrested  for  stealing  six 
shillings. 

The  night  closed  over  her  after  that.  I 
know  nothing  more. 

[  '59  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

But  I  am  sure,  whatever  may  be  the  depths 
into  which  she  has  sunk,  in  this  world  or  in 
any  other,  there  is  one  clean  chamber  in  her 
soul.  She  has  been  true  to  her  boy  and  to 
her  woman's  honor. 

More  than  that.  Of  all  these  tricky  folk, 
and  many  other  poor  vagabonds  whom  I  have 
seen  shipwrecked  and  lost  upon  the  shores  of 
life,  there  was  not  one  who  did  not  have  some 
honest  fibre  in  his  soul,  —  a  high  belief,  a 
pure  affection,  —  some  rag  of  a  white  flag  to 
hold  up  in  Gods  sight  as  he  went  down. 


[160] 


VII 


a  peculiae:  people 

I 

When  I  was  young,  although  I  lived  in  a 
slave  State,  chance  threw  me  from  time  to 
time  in  the  way  of  some  Df  the  leading  Abo- 
litionists, the  men  and  w<umen  who  then  were 
busied  in  sowing  the  see  is  whose  deadly  out- 
growth was  the  Civil  War. 

To  make  you  understand  them,  we  need 
not  discuss  the  great  issue  which  tore  the 
country  asunder.  But  I  must  remind  you  that 
they  were  for  years  a  small  band,  a  Peculiar 
People.  The  great  majority  of  northerners, 
a  large  minority  of  southerners,  including 
many  slave-owners,  recognized  slavery  as  an 
evil,  and  hoped  to  free  th  l  country  from  it  by 
gradual  and  legal  method  s.  But  these  Radi- 
cals would  not  temporize  nor  wait.  "  Abolish 
the  evil  now;  cut  out  the  cancer  now,  at  any 
cost,"  they  cried. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  the  young  peo- 

[  161  j 


Bits  of  Gossip 

pie  of  to-day  to  und  ;  and  the  fury  of  zeal 
which  fired  this  little  band,  or  the  hate  and 
horror  with  which  th  gy  were  regarded  in  the 
South.  We  have  grc  wn  more  tolerant  nowa- 
days, both  as  to  beliefs  and  individuals,  and, 
it  may  be,  more  indifferent  to  great  issues. 
We  suffer  any  man  now  openly  to  exploit 
his  opinions  ;  whether  he  preach  anarchy  or 
monarchy,  heathen  gods  or  no  God,  his  worst 
punishment  is  a  shrug  of  contempt. 

But  in  the  fif ':ies  the  Abolitionist  crossed 
Mason  and  Dixon's  line  at  the  peril  of  his 
life.  His  errand  was  supposed  to  be  either 
abduction  or  murder. 

Now,  however,  the  grandchildren  of  these 
hot-blooded,  warring  folk  in  both  South  and 
North  are  curious  to  know  what  the  men  were 
like  on  either  side  who  fought  the  war. 

It  is  a  natural  ciiriosity.  Even  the  heroes 
of  the  old  Greek  legend  whose  hate  was  so 
strong  that  their  souls  went  on  fighting  for 
four  days  after  'hei  r  bodies  were  dead,  must 
surely,  after  a  few  years  of  leisurely  rest  in 
Hades,  have  fell:  a  curiosity  as  to  what  kind 
of  men  their  enemies  really  were,  and  have 

E  '62  ] 


A  Peculiar  People 

suspected  that  they  might  have  been  good 
fellows,  after  all. 

Some  such  late  rueful  doubt  is  stirring  now 
in  the  hearts  of  the  old  foes,  and  warming 
them  to  a  wholesome,  friendly  heat. 

I  certainly  never  found  the  mark  of  Cain 
on  the  foreheads  of  these  reformers,  which 
their  fire-eating  neighbors  declared  was  there; 
nor  did  I  see  the  "aureoled  brows  of  war- 
rior saints,"  which  Lowell  and  Whittier  sang. 
They  were  men  and  women,  alike  fired  with 
one  idea,  —  the  freedom  of  the  slave.  They 
preached  it,  they  prayed  for  it,  in  season 
and  out  of  season.  They  would  not  eat  sugar 
nor  wear  cotton.  Some  of  them  gave  up  God 
himself  because  he  had  tolerated  slavery. 
They  were  generally  regarded  as  madmen 
running  about  with  a  blazing  torch  to  destroy 
their  neighbors'  homes.  But  their  frenzy  was 
usually  recognized  as  an  unselfish  madness. 
They  certainly  gained  nothing  by  carrying  the 
torch.  No  man  was  ever  more  relentlessly  de- 
nounced or  ostracized  than  was  the  Aboli- 
tionist, even  in  the  North. 

To  make  a  truthful  picture  of  them,  I  must 

[163] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

confess  that,  apart  from  this  common  uplifting 
motive,  there  was  in  every  man  and  woman 
of  the  little  sect  a  touch  of  eccentricity,  no 
matter  what  their  station  or  breeding.  They 
were  always,  in  popular  opinion,  "  queer."  It 
was  the  old  story  of  Doctor  Johnson's  twenty 
cups  of  tea,  of  Shelley's  paper  boats,  or  Jean 
Paul's  soiled  jacket  The  man  who  rebels 
against  an  established  rule,  from  Absalom  to 
Paderewski,  feels  that  he  must  wear  his  hair 
down  his  back.  The  man  who  makes  war 
upon  the  world's  great  ordinances  always  picks 
a  quarrel  with  its  harmless  little  habits,  even 
decencies.  When  the  Florentine  noble  dared 
want  and  death  to  bring  the  sacred  fire  from 
the  Holy  Sepulchre  to  the  altar  of  his  little 
church  at  home,  he  preached  an  immortal 
lesson  to  the  world.  But  why  need  he  have 
ridden  with  his  face  to  the  horse's  tail,  so  that 
the  common  people  called  him  "  Pazzi "  — 
fool  ? 

Why,  because  these  good  folk  wanted  to 
free  the  slaves,  should  they  refuse  to  cut  their 
beards  or  to  eat  meat,  or  have  run  after  new 
kinds  of  fantastic  medicines  or  religions  ? 

[i64] 


A  Peculiar  People 

But  so  it  is.  Your  chivalric  reformer,  your 
holy  saint,  almost  invariably  rights  obstinately 
about  some  absurd  trifle,  which  makes  the  pur- 
blind public  call  him  Pazzi.  You  may  safely 
take  his  thoughts  as  bread  for  your  soul,  but 
generally  you  will  find  him  a  nuisance  at 
dinner  or  on  a  journey. 

I  remember,  too,  that  when  you  were  with 
the  Abolitionists  you  were  apt  to  be  kindled 
at  first  by  their  great  purpose,  but  after  a 
while  you  were  bored  by  it.  They  saw  nothing 
else.  Like  Saint  George,  they  thought  that 
one  dragon  filled  the  world. 

Their  narrow  fury  angered  you.  "  Is  the 
Devil  dead  ? "  you  said.  "  What  of  his  old 
works  ?  What  of  drunkenness  and  hate  and 
lies  ?  Let  us  talk  of  these,  too."  But  they  ig- 
nored them  all. 

However,  I  suppose  that  the  party  or  sect 
which  is  to  do  any  work  in  the  world  must 
breathe  its  own  peculiar  atmosphere,  speak 
its  own  little  patois,  and  see  but  one  side  of 
the  question  on  which  it  fights. 

My  family  lived  on  the  border  of  Virginia. 
We  were,  so  to  speak,  on  the  fence,  and  could 

[■65] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

see  the  great  question  from  both  sides.  It  was 
a  most  unpleasant  position.  When  you  crossed 
into  Pennsylvania  you  had  to  defend  your 
slave-holding  friends  against  the  Abolition- 
ists, who  dubbed  them  all  Legrees  and  Neros ; 
and  when  you  came  home  you  quarreled  with 
your  kindly  neighbors  for  calling  the  Aboli- 
tionists "emissaries  of  hell."  The  man  who 
sees  both  sides  of  the  shield  may  be  right,  but 
he  is  most  uncomfortable. 

One  of  the  familiar  figures  to  my  childish 
eyes  during  these  yearly  visits  to  Pennsylva- 
nia was  F.  Julius  Le  Moyne,  the  candidate 
for  Vice-President  in  1840  on  the  Abolition 
ticket  with  Birney.  The  two  men  offered 
themselves  to  certain  defeat,  in  order  to  test 
the  strength  of  their  party.  They  polled  only 
a  few  thousand  votes. 

Francis  Le  Moyne  was  a  physician  in  Wash- 
ington, Pennsylvania,  then  a  sleepy  village. 
He  was  as  unlike  the  townspeople  as  if  Nep- 
tune or  Mars  had  put  on  trousers  and  coat  and 
gone  about  the  streets.  They  were  Scotch- 
Irish,  usually  sandy  in  complexion,  conven- 
tional, orthodox,  holding  to  every  opinion  or 
[166] 


A  Peculiar  People 

custom  of  their  forefathers  with  an  iron  grip. 
He  made  his  own  creed  and  customs;  he 
was  dark,  insurrectionary,  and  French.  He 
was  descended,  I  have  been  told,  from  an 
emigre  family  from  Brittany.  Some  of  the 
hunted  folk  of  the  ancien  regime  settled  on 
the  Ohio  at  Gallipolis  and  tried  fruit  rais- 
ing there.  The  father  of  the  reformer  made 
his  way  up  to  this  quiet  hill  town.  He 
was  a  kind  of  fairy  godfather  to  the  village 
children,  because  he  spoke  another  tongue 
than  English  and  lived  in  a  foreign-looking 
house  in  the  midst  of  a  great  garden  of  plants 
and  flowers  unknown  elsewhere.  In  his  office, 
too,  he  was  always  surrounded  by  uncanny 
retorts  and  crucibles ;  and  many  birds  flew 
about  him  that  he  had  taught  by  some  secret 
method  to  sing  French  airs. 

His  son  was  a  large,  swarthy  man,  with  much 
force  of  personal  magnetism.  He  had,  as  I 
remember,  a  singular  compelling,  intolerant 
eye,  which  once  seen  you  never  forgot ;  the 
eye  of  a  man  who,  having  chosen  a  cause  to 
serve,  would  give  it  the  last  drop  of  his  own 
blood  and  force  other  men  to  give  theirs.  The 
[167] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

cause  he  served  was  that  of  human  freedom. 
He  drew  many  of  his  townspeople  into  the 
Abolition  party.  But  I  think  that  they  never 
quite  understood  or  appreciated  him.  He  was 
always  alien  to  them.  He  should  have  lived 
in  a  court,  or  a  metropolis,  some  great  arena 
in  which  to  work.  He  had  the  power  for  any 
work.  Doctor  Le  Moyne  was  probably  the 
truest  representative  of  the  radical  Aboli- 
tionist in  this  country.  He  never  gave  his 
adherence  to  any  temporizing  or  experiment 
of  expediency,  whether  made  by  Fremont, 
Sumner,  or  Lincoln.  "  Cut  out  the  cancer, 
and  cut  it  now,  though  the  patient  die,"  was 
his  creed.  After  the  slaves  were  freed  he  gave 
both  his  influence  and  money  to  the  work  of 
their  education. 

Then  he  took  up  another  reform  —  cre- 
mation. The  rotting  bodies  under  ground 
fretted  him  as  much  as  the  living  slaves  had 
done.  He  urged  the  matter  vehemently  on 
the  American  people,  and  built  the  first  cre- 
matory on  this  continent.  Baron  Palm,  who, 
with  Madame  Blavatsky  and  Colonel  Olcott, 
was  one  of  the  first  teachers  in  this  country  of 
[168] 


A  Peculiar  People 

Theosophv,  was,  I  think,  the  first  person  to  be 
cremated  in  it. 

A  year  later  I  called  at  the  doctor's  office. 
The  sunny  old  room,  with  its  bottles  and 
jars,  familiar  to  me  when  I  was  a  child,  was 
unchanged.  So  was  my  old  friend,  and  the 
curious  charm  of  his  courtesy  and  dignity. 

"Joseph,"  he  said  presently,  "hand  me 
that  box  from  the  top  shelf." 

The  boy  brought  it.  It  was  a  gilt  box 
marked  Cream  Chocolates.  Inside  were 
some  charred  bones. 

"  Olcott,"  said  the  doctor,  "  scattered  Baron 
Palm's  ashes  to  the  waves  off  Coney  Island 
with  Buddhist  rites.  But  these  are  his  bones. 
Put  them  back,  Joe." 

The  doctor  never  threw  lime-light  effects 
on  his  great  ideas. 

Abolitionism  never  was  a  burning  question 
in  our  part  of  Virginia.  Nothing  lay  between 
any  slave  there  and  freedom  but  the  Ohio 
River,  which  could  be  crossed  in  a  skiff  in 
a  half  hour.  The  green  hills  of  Ohio  on 
the  other  side,  too,  were  peopled  by  Quakers, 
all  agents  for  the  Underground   Railway  to 

[i69] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Canada.  Hence  the  only  slaves  we  had  were 
those  who  were  too  comfortable  and  satisfied 
with  us  to  run  away.  We  knew  "  the  institu- 
tion "  at  its  best,  and  usually  listened  to  the 
furious  attacks  on  it  with  indifferent  con- 
tempt. 

The  most  vehement  Abolitionist  that  I  ever 
saw,  flamed  into  our  horizon  one  July  morn- 
ing in  1862.  No  other  words  will  convey  the 
breathless  heat  of  that  man's  zeal. 

I  must  remind  you  that  by  that  time  the 
Border  States  were  one  vast  armed  camp. 
The  few  men  here  and  there  who  had  cried 
out  for  arbitration  or  peace  were  either  dead, 
or  dumb  from  fear.  The  whole  country  now 
was  given  over  to  blood  and  fury.  During 
the  first  year  of  the  war  there  had  been  a 
good  deal  of  terrified  but  friendly  scuttling 
to  and  fro  across  the  border.  Local  politi- 
cians made  journeys  to  "  use  their  influence 
on  the  other  side."  Southern  children  were 
hurried  home  from  northern  schools ;  help- 
less women  sought  shelter  with  far-off  kins- 
folk. 

But  now  the  lines  between  the  northern 

[  170] 


A  Peculiar  People 

and  southern  states  were  closed  and  ram- 
parted from  end  to  end  by  armed  men.  No 
passes  could  be  obtained  from  either  Gov- 
ernment. The  man  who  tried  to  steal  across 
the  line,  no  matter  what  his  purpose,  was 
either  shot  on  sight  or  hanged  as  a  spy. 

You  can  imagine  my  dismay  then,  when, 
one  sultry  morning,  I  received  a  letter  from 
an  Abolition  leader  in  Boston,  saying :  — 

"  My  friend,  M.  d'A.  of  Paris,  a  man  emi- 
nent in  the  scientific  world  of  Europe,  has 
come  to  this  country  to  aid  the  slave  in  gain- 
ing his  freedom.  He  is  eager  to  reach  the 
South  and  begin  his  God-appointed  work.  I 
have  sent  him  direct  to  you,  hoping  that  your 
brothers  will  use  their  influence  with  some  of 
the  southern  leaders  to  enable  him  to  travel 
safely  through  the  seceded  states.  If  this  is 
not  practicable,  will  you  assist  him  to  creep 
through  the  lines  in  disguise?  No  doubt, 
courtesy  will  be  shown  to  a  foreigner  on 
both  sides." 

Courtesy  ? 

I  remember  that  at  that  moment  terrified 
cries  rose  on  the  street.   Some  pretty  young 

[171] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

girls  had  been  arrested  for  strumming  "  Dixie  " 
on  their  pianos  and  were  being  led  to  jail. 
For  martial  law  had  been  declared  in  our 
quiet  old  town  at  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
The  division  of  Virginia  was  planned  there, 
and  the  little  city  promptly  was  made  the 
capital  of  the  new  State.  Nowhere  in  the 
country,  probably,  was  the  antagonism  be- 
tween its  sections  more  bitter  than  in  these 
counties  of  Virginia  which  the  North  thus 
wrested  from  the  South  —  "for  keeps."  Fed- 
eral troops  were  hurried  into  Wheeling.  The 
stately  old  dwelling  across  the  street  from 
our  house  was  now  the  headquarters  of  the 
Mountain  Department,  under  General  Rose- 
crans.  Some  of  our  friends  who  were  seces- 
sionists were  in  an  old  theatre  just  in  sight 
which  had  been  turned  into  a  jail.  Others 
were  in  a  prison  camp  on  a  pretty  island  in 
the  river.  The  change  in  the  drowsy  town 
was  like  that  made  in  those  little  vine-decked 
villages  on  the  flanks  of  Vesuvius  after  the 
red-hot  flood  of  lava  had  passed  over  them. 
Nothing  but  gloom  and  suspicion  and  death 
were  real  to  us  now.    The  range  of  moun- 

[  172] 


A  Peculiar  People 

tains  just  out  of  sight  was  alive  with  rebel 
guerillas,  quite  as  little  minded  to  peace  and 
mercy  as  our  guards. 

And  I  was  asked  to  send  a  foreign  slave- 
stealer  safely  through  them  ! 

At  that  moment  his  card  was  brought  up. 
I  found  in  the  drawing-room  a  large,  bearded 
man,  who,  in  one  excited  minute,  in  a  torrent 
of  broken  English  and  breathless  French, 
told  me  that  he  had  come  from  his  own 
country  to  the  help  of  mine,  that  he  "  had 
thoroughly  mastered  the  situation  in  the 
North,  and  now  threw  himself  upon  my  com- 
passion, trusting  to  my  hands  to  open  the 
gates  of  the  South  to  him."  He  pulled  out 
packages  of  commendatory  letters  from  Hor- 
ace Greeley,  Sumner,  and  Lovejoy.  It  was 
in  vain  that  my  father,  whom  I  called  to  my 
help,  assured  him  that  if  one  of  these  papers 
were  found  on  him  in  the  South  he  would 
be  hanged  to  the  nearest  tree.  He  laughed 
complacently. 

"  Ah  !  I  have  my  plan  !  "  he  cried  excitedly. 
"  Zere  ees  a  little  river  near  here — ze  Kenny- 
wah.  I  go  to  its  shores.   I  dress  in  ze  costume 

C 173] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

of  ze  paysans.  You  will  kindly  have  taught 
me  zeir  patois.  I  buy  a  bateau.  I  row.  I 
sing  ze  chanson  of '  Dixie  '  loudly.  Zey  wel- 
come me  to  zeir  houses." 

Argument  was  useless.  For  two  days  M. 
d'A.  fumed  and  planned.  Then  one  of  our 
friends  —  a  rebel  and  slave-owner,  by  the 
way  —  took  pity  on  him. 

"  I  am  going  home  to  St.  Louis,  Mon- 
sieur," he  said.  "  If  you  choose  to  come  with 
me  I  think  you  can  make  your  way  into  the 
South.  The  lines  are  not  so  tightly  drawn  in 
Missouri  as  here.  But  I  will  not  answer  for 
your  safety  when  you  pass  them." 

They  started  for  St.  Louis  together.  M.d'A. 
sent  his  letters  back  to  Boston,  assuring  us 
loudly  that  he  would  "  be  silent  and  wary  as 
a  serpent ! "  He  was  promptly  arrested  the 
day  he  crossed  the  lines,  and  spent  a  year  in 
southern  prisons  and  camps,  but  at  last  was 
exchanged  and  sent  to  a  military  hospital  in 
Washington.  There  Lord  Lyons,  who  was 
appealed  to,  found  him,  worn  out  with  want 
and  disease  and  disappointment.  He  hur- 
ried home  to  France,  and  sent  back  grate- 

[  174] 


A  Peculiar  People 

ful  souvenirs  to  every  one  who  had  aided 
him. 

The  incarnation  of  the  chivalric  and  noble 
side  of  Abolitionism  was  John  C.  Fremont. 
It  had,  like  every  cause,  more  sides  than  one. 

Fremont  had  the  ardent  blood  of  a  French- 
man and  a  South  Carolinian.  He  made  of 
Freedom  a  religion.  I  don't  know  that  he 
had  any  especial  liking  for  the  negro  —  very 
few  Abolitionists,  by  the  way,  had  that.  But 
the  slavery  of  the  black  man  —  of  any  man 
—  was  abhorrent  to  him.  He  fought  for  the 
freedom  of  the  negro  as  he  would  have  fought 
for  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  or  for  liberty  with 
Kosciusko,  or  Kossuth,  or  Garibaldi. 

He  was  so  completely  the  Paladin,  the  ideal 
knight,  in  his  figure,  his  face,  and  his  manner, 
that  you  took  a  certain  comfortable  satisfac- 
tion in  knowing  that  he  was  in  the  right  niche 
in  the  world.  One  man,  at  least,  had  the  work 
in  hand  for  which  he  was  born. 

His  party  clung  to  him  with  a  passionate 
loyalty. 

"  My  creed  is  short,"  I  once  heard  Sydney 
Gay,  the  editor  of  the  "  Tribune,"  say  :  "  I  be- 

[175] 


Bit s  of  Gossip 

lieve  in  Almighty  God,  His  Son,  and  John  C. 
Fremont." 

He  meant  no  irreverence.  In  that  time, 
when  Americans  were  dying  daily  for  each 
other  and  for  ideas,  their  words  were  apt  to 
be  few  and  hot  with  meaning. 

Nature,  to  begin  with,  had  fitted  Fremont 
out  physically  as  a  hero.  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
was  demeaned,  we  are  told,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
vulgar,  by  his  lean,  big-jointed  figure  and  pim- 
pled skin ;  but  the  American  Sidney  had  the 
carriage  of  a  soldier  and  the  face  of  a  poet. 
At  first  sight  of  him,  the  boy  who  blacked  his 
boots,  or  the  woman  who  was  his  laundress, 
felt  vaguely  that  he  was  unlike  other  men  — 
a  something  bigger  and  finer,  made  for  some 
great  purpose. 

But  if  they  talked  to  him,  his  singular  sim- 
plicity and  courtesy  usually  soon  convinced 
them  of  his  inferiority  to  themselves.  The 
average  American  demands  a  little  pose  and 
strut  in  his  great  man.  His  hero  must  crow 
and  flap  his  wings  before  he  will  believe  in 
him. 

No  man  went  into  the  Civil  War  with  the 

[i76] 


A  Peculiar  People 

brilliant  prestige  of  the  great  pathfinder.  At 
the  age  when  other  young  men  are  still  study- 
ing a  profession,  he  had  explored,  on  behalf  of 
the  government,  the  unknown  wildernesses 
beyond  the  Rocky  Mountains,  had  discovered 
the  Sierra  Nevada,  the  great  Salt  Lake,  and 
had  conquered  from  Mexico  the  vast  region 
of  California  and  given  it  to  the  United  States. 

Later  he  had  organized  a  great  political 
party,  and  in  the  free  states,  by  the  popular 
vote  (though  not  the  electoral),  had  been 
elected  president  of  the  United  States. 

No  leader  on  either  side,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fight,  had  the  fame,  or  the  personal 
magnetism,  of  Fremont,  nor  the  passionate 
adherence  of  so  large  a  body  of  followers. 

He  never  was  accused  of  lack  of  courage 
or  ability,  yet  before  the  war  was  over  he  had 
sunk  into  absolute  obscurity. 

Was  ever  luck  so  hard  ? 

The  first  emancipator  of  the  slaves,  he 
never  received  any  honor  or  gratitude  from 
the  negro  race  ;  a  daring  soldier  and  a  major- 
general,  he  lived  in  poverty  for  twenty-five 
years  without  a  pension ;  the  man  who  had 

[  *77l 


Bits  of  Gossip 

given  a  vast  realm  richer  than  Golconda  to 
his  country,  he  died,  not  owning  a  single  foot 
of  ground  to  leave  to  his  children. 

No  man  surely  has  so  short  a  memory  as 
the  American. 

One  of  his  staff,  by  the  way,  once  told  me 
of  a  little  circumstance  which  throws  light 
upon  the  character  of  the  man,  and  which  I 
have  never  seen  in  print. 

General  Fremont,  on  August  30,  1861, 
in  St.  Louis,  wrote  the  proclamation  declar- 
ing martial  law  in  the  State  of  Missouri,  and 
read  it  to  his  staff  at  night.  The  clause  in 
which  the  "  slaves  of  all  persons  who  shall 
take  up  arms  against  the  United  States  are 
hereby  declared  free  men,"  was  preceded  by 
several  explanatory  paragraphs  giving  reasons 
in  justification  for  such  grave  action. 

The  document  was  discussed  that  even- 
ing, but  not  signed.  In  the  morning  the  staff 
assembled  again  ;  Fremont  came  in  and  laid 
the  proclamation  on  the  table.  The  intro- 
ductory apologetic  Whereases  were  crossed 
out. 

"  The   proclamation  of  emancipation,"  he 

[178] 


A  Peculiar  People 

said  quietly,  "  needs  no  apology.  I  will  do 
this  thing  simply  because  it  is  right." 

His  action  was,  as  we  all  know,  annulled 
by  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  Fremont  was  soon  re- 
lieved of  his  command. 

On  looking  back,  there  is  one  trait  so  com- 
mon to  the  men  whom  I  have  met  who 
achieved  distinction  that  I  am  almost' tempted 
to  suspect  that  the  distinction  was  due  to  it. 
That  was  —  simplicity  —  the  total  lack  of 
posing,  of  self-consciousness. 

Lincoln,  Fremont,  Agassiz,  and  Emerson 
were  direct  in  manner  as  children.  So  are 
Grover  Cleveland  and  Booker  Washington 
to-day.  Having  a  message  to  give  in  life,  these 
men  thrust  it  at  the  world  straight,  and  let 
their  own  selves  and  training  shrivel  back  out 
of  sight. 

This  trait  shows  itself  in  such  men  by  their 
utter  absorption  in  the  present  moment. 
Some  one  said  the  other  day  of  Mr.  Cleve- 
land :  "  Whether  he  snubs  the  British  lion  or 
catches  a  squeteague,  he  does  nothing  else. 
He  is  all  there." 

General  Fremont  had  this  trait  to  an  ex- 

[  179] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

cess.  He  literally  abandoned  himself  to  the 
moment. 

When  he  was  the  popular  idol  of  the  North 
and  had  struggled  ineffectually  for  months  to 
keep  his  place  as  leader  in  the  army,  he  was 
at  last  driven  by  injustice,  as  he  believed,  to 
give  up  the  struggle.  He  resigned  his  com- 
mand in  Virginia  and  came  home  direct  to 
New  York,  arriving  at  midnight,  to  the  hor- 
ror and  despair  of  his  friends  and  party.  Right 
or  wrong,  it  was  the  crisis  of  his  life,  and  he 
had  lost. 

I  happened  to  be  at  his  house  that  night, 
a  young  girl  from  the  country,  a  most  in- 
significant visitor.  But  I  was  a  stranger.  I 
never  had  seen  New  York,  and  I  was  his 
guest. 

He  gave  the  next  day  to  making  a  careful 
map  of  the  city  and  of  the  jaunts  to  country 
and  seaside,  that  I  might  "  understand  it  all." 
It  was  not  a  perfunctory  duty.  His  mind  was 
wholly  in  it  for  the  moment. 

It  may  be  egotistic  in  me  to  recall  this  lit- 
tle incident.  But  he  was  the  great  man  of 
my  youth,  and  he  is  dead. 

[180] 


A  Peculiar  People 

I  may  at  least  say,  like  poor  Jo,  at  the 
grave  :  "  He  was  very  good  to  me." 

If  the  great  pathfinder  was  the  incarnation 
of  the  chivalric  spirit  of  his  cause,  Horace 
Greeley  embodied  as  fully  its  exaggerated 
phases. 

I  saw  him  first  when  I  was  a  schoolgirl  in 
a  little  town  in  Pennsylvania.  The  lecturer 
was  then  in  the  height  of  his  career ;  he  was 
the  new-found  educator  of  the  whole  coun- 
try ;  every  village  waited  breathless  for  him 
to  come  and  waken  its  sleeping  intellect. 
He  came,  incessantly.  One  week  Holmes 
read  poems  to  us;  the  next  Saxe  gave  us 
puns ;  again  we  plunged  into  the  mysteries 
of  buried  Nineveh.  On  this  night  the  little 
church  was  crowded  to  the  doors,  and  all 
of  the  kerosene  lamps  blazed  and  smoked 
joyfully.  Every  man  in  the  town  took  the 
New  York  "Tribune"  and  accepted  it  as 
gospel,  and  Horace  Greeley  was  believed 
to  write  the  whole  of  it,  down  to  the  death 
notices. 

And  now,  there  he  was  himself,  the  great 
northern   prophet    and   leader !     He    stood 

[181] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

down  in  front  of  the  pulpit,  near  to  us.  His 
head  was  a  round,  shining  ball,  the  few  hairs 
straggled  wildly  over  it,  his  blue,  round  eyes 
were  those  of  a  baby,  his  voice  was  a  shrill 
squeak.  He  was  vehement  from  the  first  sen- 
tence. He  meant  to  help  these  young  people, 
and  this  was  his  one  chance  in  life  to  do  it. 
His  legs  and  arms  wobbled  continuously,  as 
though  every  joint  were  unhinged.  At  last, 
in  the  height  and  paroxysm  of  his  argument, 
when  he  had  clenched  you,  wrestling  with 
your  reason  as  for  life,  he  suddenly  stopped, 
and  taking  out  a  huge  yellow  bandana  hand- 
kerchief held  it  at  length  by  the  two  corners, 
and  stooping  down  sawed  it  energetically 
across  his  legs. 

That  was  the  end.  And  yet,  so  passionate 
was  his  appeal,  so  fine  and  high  the  truth 
which  he  had  forced  on  us,  that  nobody 
laughed.  The  audience  dispersed  in  an  awed 
silence.  As  you  went  out  of  the  hall  some- 
thing choked  your  throat,  and  the  hot  tears 
stood  in  your  eyes. 

Anecdotes  of  Horace  Greeley's  absurd  and 
childish  doings  circulated  widely  during  his 

[  182  ] 


A  Peculiar  People 

life.  Any  vulgar  scribbler  or  cartoonist  could 
point  them  out  with  giggles  and  hisses.  Only 
those  who  worked  under  him  or  knew  him 
well  understood  how  great  and  sincere  was 
the  soul  beneath  them.  It  belonged  to  his 
temperament  to  be  sensitive  and  easily  hurt 
as  a  child.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  malig- 
nant ridicule  heaped  upon  him  during  the 
campaign  in  which  he  was  a  candidate  for 
the  presidency,  shortened  his  life. 

After  all,  as  far  as  the  Abolition  party  was 
concerned,  the  war  was  very  like  the  tourney 
in  "  Ivanhoe."  One  famous  leader  after  an- 
other came  to  the  front,  —  Fremont,  Beecher, 
Greeley,  —  to  be  unhorsed  by  their  own  party 
and  carried  from  the  field. 

The  struggle  for  command  in  the  domi- 
nant party  during  the  Civil  War  was  as  hot 
and  relentless  as  it  is  to-day.  During  the 
years  immediately  before  the  struggle  began, 
the  Abolitionists  naturally  were  abhorrent  to 
all  the  other  parties. 

There  was  one  family,  new-comers  in  our 
little  town,  who  were  accused  of  being  emis- 
saries of  Garrison,  I  do  not  know  how  truth- 

[■83] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

fully,  and  in  consequence  were  socially 
tabooed.  They  were  illiterate,  noisy  radicals, 
believers  in  spiritualism,  in  divorce,  and  in 
woman's  rights.  They  lived  in  a  little  farm- 
house on  the  edge  of  the  borough.  In  the 
spring  of  1859  a  tall,  gaunt  old  man  visited 
them,  who  came  into  the  town  sometimes, 
stalking  up  and  down  the  streets  with  his 
eyes  fixed  and  lips  moving  like  a  man  under 
the  influence  of  morphia.  After  he  had  disap- 
peared, it  was  told  that  he  was  a  poor  farmer 
from  the  West  who  was  insane  on  the  ques- 
tion of  slavery,  and  that  he  had  brought  a 
quantity  of  huge  pikes  and  axes  to  the  house 
of  our  new  neighbors,  with  which  the  slaves 
in  town  were  to  kill  their  masters  whenever 
there  should  be  an  uprising. 

I  remember  how  we  all  laughed  at  the 
story.  The  children  used  to  tease  the  old 
black  aunties  and  uncles  to  show  them  how 
they  meant  to  stab  them  with  pikes  or  behead 
them  with  axes  when  the  day  came.  We 
thought  it  a  very  good  joke. 

But  five  months  later,  when  the  old  farmer 
died  at  Harpers  Ferry,  on  that  bright  Octo- 

[184] 


A  Peculiar  People 

ber  day,  the  whole  world  looking  on  with 
bated  breath,  the  pikes  were  brought  out  of 
hiding  by  his  friends,  who  declared  that  they 
never  had  meant  to  give  them  to  the  negroes 
to  use,  and  had  thought  the  old  man  mad. 

The  race  for  whom  he  had  made  the  pikes 
certainly  never  would  have  used  them.  They 
are  not  a  cruel  nor  malignant  people.  Dur- 
ing the  Civil  War  the  women  and  children 
of  the  South  were  wholly  under  the  protec- 
tion of  their  slaves,  and  I  never  have  heard 
of  a  single  instance  in  which  they  abused  the 
trust. 

I  married  before  the  war  was  over,  and 
came  to  live  in  the  North,  where  I  met  many 
of  the  men  and  women  who  had  kindled  the 
fire  under  the  caldron. 

In  the  flush  of  victory  their  motives  and 
their  oddities  came  out  more  plainly.  Wen- 
dell Phillips  had  precisely  that  indefinable 
personal  dignity  and  charm  which  Horace 
Greeley  lacked ;  perhaps  he  had  a  little  too 
much  of  it  as  an  orator.  You  were  so  inter- 
ested in  the  man  that  you  forgot  the  cause 
that  he  urged. 

[  185  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

I  saw  him  first  when  he  came  to  Philadel- 
phia during  the  war,  to  fan  the  zeal  of  the 
Quaker  wing  of  his  party  to  fiercer  heats. 
The  audience  was  small,  mostly  made  up  of 
gentle,  attentive  women  Friends,  who  in  their 
white  caps  and  dove-colored  garments  seemed 
to  make  a  band  around  him  of  moderation 
and  calm  —  virtuous  but  stifling.  His  brief, 
fiery  sentences  fell  into  it  and  went  out  as 
barbed  arrows  shot  into  a  down  cushion.  When 
he  ended  with  a  passionate  appeal  they  looked 
mildly  at  one  another,  nodded  and  smiled,  and 
a  low  "Urn  —  um-m  "  of  approval  breathed 
through  the  hall. 

When  the  next  speaker  rose  Mr.  Phillips 
found  his  way  to  the  corner  where  we  sat, 
with  the  "  world's  people." 

"  Did  you  ever  hear,"  he  said  abruptly,  "  of 
Sarah  Siddons'  first  appearance  in  Edin- 
burgh ?  She  had  heard  that  the  Scotch  were 
a  lethargic  folk,  and  put  forth  all  her  powers 
to  move  them.  Lady  Macbeth  was  so  terri- 
ble that  night  that  she  shivered  with  horror 
at  herself;  but  her  audience  sat  calm  and 
dumb.    In  the  sleep-walking  scene  she  was 

[  1 86  ] 


A  Peculiar  People 

used,  in  London,  to  see  the  whole  house  rise 
in  terror ;  men  would  shriek  and  women  be 
carried  out  fainting.  But  now  there  was  un- 
broken silence,  until  an  old  man  in  the  pit 
chuckled  and  said  aloud  to  his  neighbor: 
'  Aweel,  Sandy,  that 's  nae  so  bad  ! ' 

"  But  the  Philadelphians,"  he  added,  with  a 
forced  laugh,  "  do  not  commit  themselves  as 
far  as  that !  " 

Yet  these  identical  dove-colored  women 
had  lighted  the  torch  which  set  the  country 
on  fire.  The  headquarters  of  the  Abolition 
party  was  among  the  Philadelphia  Quakers. 
Here  for  years  was  the  northern  station  of 
the  famous  secret  Underground  Railroad,  by 
which  thousands  of  flying  slaves  escaped. 
The  agent  here  was  William  Still,  a  grave, 
shrewd  negro,  who  died  only  two  years  ago, 
leaving  a  large  fortune  which  he  had  amassed 
in  trade. 

The  fugitive  slaves  came  to  him  in  every 
kind  of  disguise  and  were  hid  until  they  could 
be  sent  on  to  Canada.  He  published  an  ac- 
count of  it  all  after  the  war  was  over.  No 
tragedy  ever  was  more  dramatic  than  these 

[■87] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

records  set  down  from  day  to  day.  The  slaves 
always  gave  him  an  account  of  themselves, 
their  masters  and  their  families.  One  even- 
ing came  a  couple  of  gray-haired  old  men, 
brothers,  who  had  escaped  from  Alabama. 
They  told  him  they  had  been  sold  when  boys 
by  their  master  in  Maryland.  Their  mother 
and  her  baby  were  not  sold.  They  never  had 
seen  or  heard  of  either  of  them  again. 

"  What  was  your  Maryland  master's  name? " 
asked  Still.  They  told  him.  He  waited  until 
the  room  was  clear. 

"  I  am  your  brother,"  he  said.  "  /  was  the 
baby.    But  our  mother  is  dead." 

Another  negro  prominent  in  those  days 
among  the  Abolitionists  was  a  Mrs.  Frances 
Harper,  an  able,  ambitious  woman,  who  lec- 
tured with  a  strange,  bitter  eloquence. 

Charles  Sumner  was  often  in  consultation 
with  these  Philadelphia  leaders,  but  I  never 
happened  to  see  him.  Whittier  also  came, 
and  James  Russell  Lowell.  But  Lowell's 
politics  and  poetry  were,  as  a  rule,  kept  in- 
side of  his  books.  He  himself  in  every-day 
life  was  so  simple,  so  sincere,  so  human,  that 
[188] 


A  Peculiar  People 

you  forgot  that  he  had  any  higher  calling 
than  that  of  being  the  most  charming  of 
companions. 

Mr.  Whittier,  on  the  contrary,  was  always 
the  poet  and  the  Abolitionist.  He  did  not 
consciously  pose,  but  he  never  for  a  moment 
forgot  his  mission.  He  was  thin,  mild,  and 
ascetic,  looking  like  a  Presbyterian  country 
minister.  He  gave  his  views  of  slavery  and 
the  South  with  a  gentle,  unwearied  obstinacy, 
exasperating  to  any  one  who  knew  that  there 
was  another  side  to  the  question. 

I  never  saw  a  human  being  with  a  per- 
sonality more  aggressive  than  that  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher.  No  matter  how  crowded  the 
room  might  be,  you  were  conscious  only  of 
this  huge,  lumbering  man  in  it,  who  was  so 
oddly  unconscious  of  himself.  He  had  too 
big  a  nature  for  vanity.  His  brain  was  eager 
and  grasping.  Whether  the  talk  turned  on 
a  religion  or  a  bonnet,  he  caught  the  sub- 
ject with  impatient  force  and  tore  the  whole 
meaning  out  of  it.  He  was,  too,  more  than 
other  people  —  human.  He  was  indifferent 
to  nothing.    Every  drop  of  his  thick  blood 

[i89] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

was  hot  with  love  or  hate.  He  was  an  Abo- 
litionist, not  so  much  from  love  of  Freedom 
as  love  of  the  poor  black  man  himself.  His 
humor  was  that  of  Dooley,  not  Lamb.  He 
had  the  voice  of  a  great  orator;  if  you  did 
not  know  the  language  he  spoke,  the  mag- 
netism in  it  would  make  you  laugh  or  cry. 

He  had  an  enormous  following  of  men  and 
a  few  women.  But,  back  of  the  heavy  jaws 
and  thick  lips  and  searching  eyes  swathed 
in  drooping  lids,  back  of  the  powerful  in- 
tellect and  tender  sympathy,  there  was  a 
nameless  something  in  Mr.  Beecher  which 
repelled  most  women.  You  resolved  obsti- 
nately not  to  agree  with  his  argument,  not 
to  laugh  or  cry  with  him,  not  to  see  him 
again. 

Perhaps  it  is  ungracious  in  me  to  tell  this. 
But  I  cannot  give  the  impression  he  made 
without  it.  He  was  always  Doctor  Fell  to 
me,  in  spite  of  his  strength  and  the  wonder- 
ful charm  of  his  sympathy  with  every  living 
creature. 

I  met  him  first  at  a  large  dinner-party  in 
New  York.    He  knew  me  only  as  a  young 

[  i9o] 


A  Peculiar  People 

girl  from  the  hills  in  Virginia,  a  friend  of  his 
friends.  But  he  heard  me  speak  of  certain 
forgotten  old  hymns  of  which  I  was  fond. 

"  Bring  her  to  Plymouth  Church  next  Sun- 
day," he  whispered  to  my  hostess. 

There  was  an  immense  audience  in  the 
great  church  that  Sunday.  The  seats  rose 
as  in  a  circus  up  from  the  pulpit ;  they  were 
all  full  and  the  aisles  were  packed  with  men 
standing ;  at  the  back  were  the  organ  and 
choir.  During  the  service  that  great  congre- 
gation sang,  one  after  another,  every  one  of 
the  old  hymns  that  I  loved.  The  vast  volume 
of  sound  rose  to  Heaven  as  one  soft,  pleading 
voice.  I  never  shall  forget  that  morning.  The 
incident  shows  the  tact,  the  eagerness  of  the 
man  to  be  kind  to  everybody. 

Then  there  were  many  Quaker  women, 
honest  of  heart,  sweet  of  face,  soft  of  speech, 
and  narrow  in  their  beliefs,  as  only  your 
gentle,  soft  woman  can  be.  Chief  among 
them  was  Eliza  Randolph  Turner,  who  first 
invented  the  "  Children's  Week  "  charity,  and, 
later,  founded  and  governed  an  immense  guild 
of  working  women  in  Philadelphia.   She  died 

[  191  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

a  year  or  two  ago,  and  she  cannot  be  now  in 
any  other  of  God's  worlds  a  more  efficient 
angel  than  she  was  here  to  poor  shop  women 
and  sick  babies. 

Her  allies  were  Mary  Grew  and  Margaret 
Burleigh.  The  three  dove-colored  women  lived 
in  a  huge  quiet  house,  surrounded  by  trees, 
in  Philadelphia.  They  preached  and  worked 
together,  close  as  Siamese  twins.  It  never 
occurred  to  any  of  them  that  they  had  come 
into  the  world  for  any  other  purpose  than  to 
reform  it. 

I  remember  that  I  was  with  Mary  Grew 
and  her  friend,  Mrs.  Burleigh,  when  the  news 
came  of  the  final  passage  of  the  Fifteenth 
Amendment.  The  hope  of  their  lives  was 
accomplished.  But  they  were  silent  for  a  long 
time. 

"  What  will  thee  and  I  do  now  ? "  one  said 
to  the  other  drearily.  "  There  is  prison  reform  ? 
Or  we  might  stir  up  women  to  vote  ? " 

They  could  hardly  wait  until  the  next  day 
to  begin. 

The  queen  bee  of  this  buzzing  swarm  was 
Lucretia  Mott,  one  of  the  most  remarkable 

[  x92  ] 


A  Peculiar  People 

women  that  this  country  has  ever  produced. 
Fugitive  slaves,  lecturers,  reformers,  every- 
body who  wanted  help,  and  everybody  who 
wanted  to  give  help,  found  their  way  to  her 
quiet  little  farmhouse  on  the  Old  York  Road ; 
some  were  checked  and  some  urged  onward, 
but  all  were  cared  for  and  helped.  No  man 
in  the  Abolition  party  had  a  more  vigorous 
brain  or  ready  eloquence  than  this  famous 
Quaker  preacher,  but  much  of  her  power 
came  from  the  fact  that  she  was  one  of  the 
most  womanly  of  women.  She  had  pity  and 
tenderness  enough  in  her  heart  for  the  mother 
of  mankind,  and  that  keen  sense  of  humor 
without  which  the  tenderest  of  women  is  but 
a  dull  clod. 

Even  in  extreme  old  age  she  was  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  women  I  ever  have  seen.  She 
was  a  little,  vivid,  delicate  creature,  alive  with 
magnetic  power.  It  is  many  years  since  that 
charming  face  with  its  wonderful  luminous 
eyes  was  given  back  to  the  earth,  but  it  is  as 
real  to  me  at  this  moment  as  ever. 

I  remember  that  once  a  southern  woman 
met  Mrs.  Mott  at  our  house.   With  all  slave- 

[  J93] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

holders  she  had  been  taught  to  abhor  her  as 
the  modern  Borgia  —  the  planner  of  war  and 
murders.  When  she  caught  sight  of  her  as  she 
came  into  the  room  she  gasped  out,  "  Why ! 
she  looks  like  a  saint ! " 

She  talked  much  to  her  during  the  evening, 
and  after  she  had  gone  said  earnestly :  "  I 
believe  that  that  woman  is  one  of  the  saints 
of  God ! " 

When  you  were  with  Mrs.  Mott  you  were 
apt  to  think  of  her  as  the  mother  and  house- 
keeper rather  than  as  the  leader  of  a  party. 
She  came  from  Nantucket,  and  until  the  day 
of  her  death  kept  up  the  homely,  domestic 
habits  of  her  youth.  She  might  face  a  mob 
at  night  that  threatened  her  life,  or  lecture 
to  thousands  of  applauding  disciples,  but  she 
never  forgot  in  the  morning  to  pick  and  shell 
the  peas  for  dinner.  Her  fingers  never  were 
quiet.  She  knitted  wonderful  bedspreads  and 
made  gay  rag-carpets  as  wedding  gifts  for  all 
of  her  granddaughters. 

She  had,  oddly  enough,  the  personal 
charm,  the  temperament,  the  hospitable 
soul  of  a  southern  woman.    I  used  wickedly 

[  194] 


A  Peculiar  People 

to  wish  that  she  had  been  born  on  the 
other  side. 

How  she  would  have  glorified  her  duty  as 
a  slaveholder  and  magnified  her  office  !  And 
how  they  would  have  appreciated  her  beauty 
and  charm  down  there ! 

We  native  Americans  are  of  many  opin- 
ions —  according  to  the  place  where  we  hap- 
pen to  be  born  —  but  of  one  kin.  Scratch 
the  skin  of  a  slaveholder  or  an  Abolitionist 
and  you  find  the  same  blood  —  and  good 
honest  blood  it  is  ! 


[  195] 


VIII 

ABOVE  THEIR  FELLOWS 

I  should  like  to  tell  you  something  of  a  few 
men  whom  I  have  happened  to  meet,  —  some 
of  the  Hamans  and  Mordecais  whom  Ameri- 
cans in  the  last  century  delighted  to  honor. 
But  remember,  I  am  no  politician,  and  no 
seer  into  souls.  I  can  give  you  no  new  in- 
sight into  their  characters,  nor  any  hints 
which  will  make  their  work  in  the  world 
clearer  to  you. 

The  only  hero  known  to  my  childhood  was 
Henry  Clay.  It  would  be  impossible  to  make 
this  generation  understand  what  the  great 
Kentuckian  was  to  the  country  then.  Amer- 
icans, now,  are  concerned  about  ideas  or 
things — Imperialism,  Labor,  the  Trusts,  or 
the  like.  Then  they  cared  for  the  individual 
man.  Clay,  Webster,  or  Jackson,  in  their  day, 
was  personally  loved  or  hated  with  a  kind  of 
ferocity. 

[i96] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

None  of  our  public  leaders  now  wins  that 
worshiping,  close  allegiance  from  his  follow- 
ers. There  are  several  reasons  for  the  blind 
devotion  of  the  American  people,  then,  to 
their  leaders,  and  the  lack  of  it  to-day.  The 
nation  was  smaller  then  than  now.  It  was 
still  made  up  of  the  three  original  families,  — 
the  English  Churchmen,  the  Scotch-Irish, 
and  the  Puritans.  The  great  flood-tide  from 
every  nation  under  heaven  had  not  yet  set  in 
upon  our  shores.  People  knew  each  other ; 
they  were  neighborly,  in  the  village  sense  of 
the  word.  There  were  few  newspapers  and 
no  reporters.  Public  men  could  not  speak 
daily  to  the  nation  by  telegraph,  nor  make 
themselves  known  to  it  by  their  portraits  in 
every  evening's  edition. 

They  met  their  constituents  face  to  face. 
Even  travel  promoted  this  personal  intimacy. 
They  did  not  go  to  bed  in  Philadelphia  to 
waken  in  Chicago.  They  jogged  to  and  fro 
in  private  conveyances  or  by  stage-coach,  and 
so  came  to  know  every  man  and  woman  on 
the  road,  and  made  themselves  loved  or  hated, 
as  they  cannot  now  do  by  print  or  telegraph. 

[  197] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

What  opportunities  there  were  for  quarrels 
or  confidences  in  the  leisurely  journeys  on 
the  National  Road  —  the  one  great  highway 
of  the  country!  Men  found  each  other  out 
in  the  long  days  of  jolting  side  by  side,  or 
during  the  nights  in  the  inns  which  were  set 
along  the  road  from  Maryland  to  Indiana. 
There  the  guests  ate  heavy  suppers  of  veni- 
son and  bear  steak  and  corn  dodgers,  and 
gathered  around  huge  fireplaces  where  a  ton 
of  coal  or  whole  logs  of  wood  roared  and 
burned. 

There  was  no  more  hearty  companion  for 
these  journeys  than  "  Henry ;  "  no  one  who 
had  a  larger  stock  of  stories,  or  who  took  or 
gave  a  joke  with  finer  humor. 

In  the  village  in  which  we  lived  Clay  was 
a  demigod.  To  the  women  and  children  he 
was  not  exactly  human.  I  remember  when  I 
was  about  five  years  old  that  I  once  heard 
two  planters  from  Kentucky  discussing  him 
with  my  father. 

"  Harry,"  they  said, "  has  wasted  his  chances. 
If  he  had  looked  after  his  stock  and  let  politics 
alone,  he  would  have  been  well-to-do  to-day !  " 

[i98] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

I  was  cold  with  horror  as  I  listened.  If 
they  had  attacked  the  Bible  itself  they  would 
not  have  seemed  to  me  more  blasphemous. 
Henry  Clay  and  cattle  ! 

I  had  heard  that  this,  the  One  Man,  was  a 
personal  friend  of  my  father,  and  I  felt  that 
all  of  the  family,  for  that  reason,  took  place 
in  the  ruling  class  of  the  world.  Long  after- 
wards I  knew  that  every  man  in  the  village 
was  his  intimate  friend,  and  every  other  man 
to  whom  he  could  talk  for  half  an  hour. 

A  lithograph  of  the  one  great  man  then  hung 
in  every  house  in  the  South.  I  used  to  hold 
my  breath  with  awe  when  I  chanced  to  look 
at  that  ugly,  powerful  face.  The  black  hair 
swept  back  from  the  towering  forehead,  pre- 
cisely, I  thought,  as  in  the  pictures  of  Olym- 
pian Jove  !  The  eyes  concealed  power  greater 
than  that  of  a  mere  man  —  the  sensitive  chin, 
the  huge  mouth,  the  cloak  thrown  back  with 
imperial  grace  —  surely  this  was  a  being 
much  more  than  human  ! 

Many  rational  men  and  women  shared 
then  in  my  childish  worship.  No  man  proba- 
bly ever  won  such  affection  from  the  people 

C  199  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

of  this  country  as  "  Henry,"  as  they  loved  to 
call  him.  Sometimes  it  was  "  Harry,"  or 
"  The  Mill  Boy  of  the  Slashes." 

His  journeys  from  his  plantation  in  Ken- 
tucky to  Washington  and  back  by  slow  plod- 
ding stage-coach  and  boat  were  long  panora- 
mas of  cheering  crowds. 

The  poorest  river  hand  or  red-faced  farmer 
who  had  ridden  twenty  miles  "  to  see  Clay 
go  by  "  felt  a  proud,  personal  ownership  of 
him,  pored  every  week  over  his  speeches  in 
the  "  United  States  Gazette  "  with  hot,  beat- 
ing pulses,  or  chuckled  secretly  as  he  whis- 
pered to  his  neighbor  stories  of  Clay's  duels 
or  other  doubtful  doings. 

"  Henry  will  be  Henry  to  the  last ! "  he 
would  say  fondly,  as  one  speaks  of  the  bril- 
liant, dear  vagabond  of  the  family. 

An  old  friend,  Mr.  R ,  once  told  me  of 

an  incident  very  characteristic  of  Clay.  When 

he,  R ,  was  a  boy  of  ten,  he  was  at  work 

alone  late  one  evening  in  his  father's  office. 

It  was  in  a  village  on  the  National  Road 
through  which  the  coaches  ran  from  Wash- 
ington to  the  wilderness  of  the  West.  A  tall 
[  200  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

man  wrapped  in  a  cloak  hastily  entered,  and 
asked  for  his  father. 

"  He  is  not  at  home,"  said  the  boy. 

The  stranger  with  a  gesture  of  annoyance 
turned  to  go  out.  But  the  lad  suddenly  re- 
cognized him  and  dashed  between  him  and 
the  door. 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Clay !  Can  /  do  anything  for 
you?    Oh,  if  I  could  !  " 

Clay  hesitated.  "  Why,  my  lad,  I  find  my- 
self short  of  money,"  he  said.  "  I  came  to 
borrow  a  hundred  dollars  from  your  father 
until  I  reach  Washington.    But  "  — 

The  boy  knew  his  father  to  be  one  of  Clay's 
most  loyal  friends  and  followers. 

"  I  can  get  it !  He  would  be  mortified  if 
you  left  his  office  without  it,"  he  cried,  and 
his  hands  shaking  with  eagerness,  he  opened 
the  desk  and  took  out  the  money. 

Clay  thanked  him  and  turned  to  the  coach 
waiting  outside. 

In  a  few  days  the  money  was  returned, 
and  the  incident,  the  boy  supposed,  was  for- 
gotten. 

But  two  years  later  Mr.  Clay  came  to  this 

[  so1  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

village  during  a  presidential  campaign  in 
which  he  was  the  popular  candidate.  Bands 
played,  the  militia  marched,  oxen  and  sheep 
were  roasted  whole,  the  entire  county  assem- 
bled in  a  fever  of  excitement. 

At  last  the  great  man  appeared  on  a  plat- 
form, and  the  principal  men  of  the  county 
were  formally  brought  forward  to  be  pre- 
sented to  him. 

Suddenly  he  stepped  quickly  to  the  edge 
of  the  platform  and  beckoned  to  a  small  boy 
perched  on  a  tree  across  the  field. 

"  Pardon  me,  gentlemen,"  he  said,  "  but 
there  is  a  personal  friend  of  mine  whom  I 
must  take  by  the  hand." 

"  I  went  up,"  said  Mr.  R ,  "  my  feet 

like  lead  and  my  head  on  fire.  He  shook 
hands  with  me  and  kept  me  beside  him,  his 
hand  on  my  shoulder,  while  the  great  men 
were  introduced.  He  was  their  leader,  but 
he  was  my  friend.  I  am  eighty  years  old,"  he 
added  solemnly,  "  and  that  was  the  proudest, 
best  minute  of  my  life.  From  that  day  that 
man  was  more  to  me  than  any  other  man." 

"  Clay,"  an  old  kinsman  of  mine  once  told 
[  202  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

me,"  never  forgot  the  face  of  friend  or  enemy. 
He  would  take  up  you  and  your  talk  just 
where  you  had  left  off  with  him  years  before." 

The  same  man  told  me  that  Clay  once  vis- 
ited a  little  town  in  Pennsylvania  after  an 
absence  of  ten  years.  He  was  on  his  way 
to  take  his  seat  in  Congress.  It  was  a  dark 
winter's  evening,  but  he  was  recognized  as 
he  left  the  stage-coach  and  hurried  into  the 
supper  room  of  the  inn.  The  news  flew  from 
house  to  house  that  Clay  was  in  town,  and 
every  man  in  the  village  gathered  in  the  hall 
of  the  inn  to  see  him  as  he  came  out.  The 
burgess,  a  consequential  little  fellow,  who  had 
once  traveled  as  far  as  Washington  City, 
called  out :  — 

"  Form  two  lines,  gentlemen !  On  either 
side.  I  know  him.  I  will  present  you  to  Mr. 
Clay." 

But  just  as  the  lines  were  formed  the  door 
opened  and  a  large  man  with  heavy  jaws  and 
keen  black  eyes  stood  an  instant  on  the 
threshold. 

"  Ah  !  "  he  cried,  with  beaming  eyes,  "  here 
is  Wood  !   And  Barnes  !   All  my  old  friends  \ 

[  203  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Humphreys,  too  ? "  He  passed  down  between 
the  lines,  shaking  hands,  asking  questions 
and  joking.  There  was  not  a  man  whom  he 
had  met  ten  years  before  that  he  did  not  hail 
by  name. 

At  last  he  stopped.  "  Ah !  Here  's  some- 
body I  don't  know.  Wait !  One  minute !  " 
holding  the  man  by  the  hand  and  eying  him 
keenly.  "  That  is  a  Pugh  nose,  I  '11  wager 
my  life !   You  are  John  Pugh's  son  !  Ah  ?  " 

"  That  hit  won  the  game,"  said  the  story- 
teller. "  There  was  a  shout  of  delight,  and 
the  crowd  followed  him  to  the  coach  cheer- 
ing until  it  was  out  of  sight.  Every  man  there 
voted  for  him  at  the  next  election.  Pugh 
stumped  the  county  for  him.  We  felt  that 
it  was  a  man  with  a  brain  like  that  who  was 
needed  at  the  helm  of  state." 

Another  of  our  leaders  —  James  G.  Blaine 
—  possessed  this  abnormal  memory  for  faces 
and  names.  It  was  as  useful  to  him  as  a  sixth 
sense.  Behind  it,  too,  in  his  case,  there  were 
the  warm  heart  and  ardent  instincts  which 
came  to  him  from  his  Irish  forefathers.  He 
won  as  devoted  an  allegiance  from  the  nation 

[  204] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

as  did  Clay.  I  don't  believe,  by  the  way,  that 
any  man,  be  he  statesman  or  writer  or  soldier, 
ever  has  gained  that  passionate  loyalty  from 
the  public  who  did  not  have  red  blood  at 
heart  and  the  boyish  temperament. 

When  I  was  a  schoolgirl  in  Washington, 
Pennsylvania,  James  Blaine  was  a  big,  un- 
gainly law  student  in  the  same  village.  It 
consisted  then  of  a  cluster  of  quaint  stone 
and  brick  houses  built  in  colonial  times,  in 
the  midst  of  the  rich  farms  and  low-rolling 
hills  of  western  Pennsylvania.  It  is  a  pros- 
perous city  now,  but  in  the  leisurely,  calm 
forties  nobody  thought  of  huge  rivers  of  gas 
hidden  beneath  the  old  dwellings  and  their 
great  gardens  of  Bourbon  roses  and  Canter- 
bury bells. 

A  college  and  a  girls'  school  then  kept  the 
village  alive  and  gave  a  scholastic  flavor  to 
its  talk  and  habits  of  thought.  Old  school 
Calvinism  was  the  dominant  faith,  and  to  the 
kindly,  slow-going,  conservative  folk  the  un- 
pardonable sin  and  hell  were  facts  quite  as 
real  and  present  as  were  their  own  borough 
laws  or  little  brick  jail. 

[205] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

At  the  foot  of  the  steep,  grassy  street  stood 
a  gray,  rambling  house  with  wide  porches  in 
front,  and  at  the  back  there  was  a  meadow 
through  which  a  sleepy  brook  crept.  This 
was  the  Blaine  homestead.  The  family  was 
made  up  of  two  or  three  gentle,  low-voiced 
women  and  a  troop  of  noisy  young  men. 
They  were  popular  with  the  villagers,  and  yet 
were  looked  upon  doubtfully  by  some  of  them. 
Did  not  the  women,  thorough-bred  as  they 
were,  carry  rosaries  ?  Was  there  not  a  Ma- 
donna on  the  walls  ? 

But  everybody  liked  one  of  the  boys,  — 
Jim,  a  big,  awkward  collegian,  with  a  joke  and 
a  hearty  word  for  even  the  gutter  dogs.  But 
nobody  expected  the  lazy,  good-natured  fel- 
low to  make  any  mark  in  the  world. 

One  of  his  old  neighbors  said  to  me  lately : 
"  Even  as  a  boy  Blaine  had  a  curious  mag- 
netism and  charm.  I  remember  that  one  day 
when  I  was  a  child  I  was  bidden  to  draw 
some  fresh  water.  I  was  in  a  rage  at  leaving 
my  book,  and  finding  the  pail  nearly  full, 
threw  the  water  out  of  the  door  just  as  Jim 
was  passing,  in  his  Sunday  suit,  on  his  way 

[206] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

to  a  party.  He  was  drenched  from  head  to 
foot.  I  stood  aghast  and  dumb;  he  turned 
and  hurried  home.  Presently  he  came  back, 
dry,  but  in  his  old  clothes.  He  stopped  and 
nodded  gayly. 

"  '  Don't  worry,  Will !  I  did  n't  care  to  go 
to  the  old  party,  anyhow ! '  stopping  my 
stammering  apologies  by  sitting  down  to  joke 
and  laugh  with  me." 

The  trifling  act  shows  the  same  kind  heart 
and  unerring  tact  which  enabled  James  G. 
Blaine  during  so  many  years  to  control  war- 
ring elements  in  Congress  as  no  other  man 
ever  has  done. 

His  good  humor  was  imperturbable.  A 
rancorous  western  politician  met  him  one 
day  on  the  steps  of  the  Capitol  with :  "  Mr. 
Blaine,  I  am  a  stranger  to  you.  But  I  take 
the  liberty  of  telling  you  that  you  are  a  fool 
and  a  scoundrel !  " 

"  Really  ? "  said  Blaine,  lifting  his  hat. 
"  Now  I  wonder  what  you  would  have  said  if 
you  had  been  my  intimate  friend  ?  " 

Like  Clay,  Mr.  Blaine  had  an  enormous 
following  of  friends.  Both  men  had  the  royal 
[207] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

power  of  personal  magnetism.  Blaine's  inter- 
est in  people  was  genuine  and  unaffected.  If 
he  gave  his  hand  to  you  he  made  you  feel  sure 
that  some  of  his  heart  went  with  it. 

Some  time,  long  ago,  there  had  been  an 
intermarriage  in  our  families,  so  that  we  al- 
ways —  in  the  southern  phrase  —  "  called 
cousins,"  and  having  this  background  of  old 
times  and  childish  friends  we  kept  up  the 
fiction  of  relationship  through  life,  until  we, 
too,  were  old  and  gray. 

During  his  busy  years  of  public  life  when 
on  his  way  from  Washington  to  New  York 
he  would  dodge  committees  and  crowds  at 
the  Philadelphia  station  and  come  to  us  for  a 
quiet  hour  or  two  of  —  "  Do  you  remember  ? " 
or  "  What  has  become  of  "  this  or  that  old 
comrade  ? 

He  kept  sight  of  all  the  poor,  obscure 
friends  of  his  boyhood,  and  as  I  learned  else- 
where, he  never,  with  all  his  burden  of  work 
and  worry,  failed  to  help  them  or  their  children 
when  they  needed  help. 

No  doubt,  in  public  life,  Mr.  Blaine  may 
have  gilded  the  gold  of  his  friendly  impulses 
[208] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

by  a  little  finesse.  On  one  occasion  when  he 
was  to  be  the  guest  of  honor  at  a  large  banquet 
in  Philadelphia,  he  asked  my  husband  as  we 
sat  at  dinner,  "  What  are  the  names  of  the 
principal  men  that  I  shall  meet  to-night?" 

They  were  told  to  him. 

An  hour  later,  when  they  were  presented 
to  him,  Blaine  detained  each  with  a  look  of 
sudden  keen  interest. 

"  B ?  did  you  say  ?   There  was  a  great 

jurist  B in  Philadelphia  when  I  was  a 

boy —  He  stood  in  the  highest  court  of 
the  temple  while  I  was  peeping  through  the 
fence  "  — 

"  My  father,  sir."   And    B passed  on, 

flushed  and  smiling. 

"  W ?   Of  English  descent  ?    I  see  it  in 

your  features  —  the  name,  too.  It  goes  back 
to  Elizabeth's  time.  Not  from  Leamington  ? 
Why,  you  must  be  a  descendant  of  the  Bishop, 
—  the  immortal  W ?  " 

How  did  he  know  that  the  one  weakness 
of  this  W was  to  be  thought  a  descend- 
ant of  the  famous  Bishop  ?  How,  in  that 
brief  hour  after  dinner,  had  he  summoned 

[  209] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

into  his  brain  all  the  pleasant  facts  or  fancies 
that  clung  to  the  names  of  these  strangers, 
so  that  by  a  word  he  made  them  his  allies 
for  life  ? 

He  altered  very  little  during  his  life.  When 
he  was  the  brilliant,  popular  college  boy  of 
the  village,  he  did  not  care  a  groat  for  the 
honors  which  he  won.  When  he  was  a  candi- 
date for  the  presidency,  beneath  the  able  poli- 
tician was  a  melancholy  idler,  who  at  heart 
did  not  care  whether  he  ever  entered  the 
White  House  or  not. 

I  heard  him  say  the  week  before  the  con- 
vention met  which  meant  to  nominate  him :  — 

"  I  am  sick  to  the  soul  of  the  public  and  of 
public  life.  I  want  a  quiet  home,  my  children, 
and  peace  for  my  old  age." 

He  meant  it  —  on  that  day.  The  next  he 
was  hard  at  work  plotting  for  the  nomination. 

He  came  of  an  able,  scholarly,  sluggish 
stock.  He  had  the  strong  brain,  the  keen  per- 
ception, the  unerring  tact  needed  to  control 
masses  of  men  —  when  he  cared  to  control 
them.  The  powerful  engine  was  there,  but 
not  always  the  fire  to  move  it.    He  was  pushed 

[  2Io] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

forward  and  held  back  throughout  his  life  by 
the  ambition  or  faults  of  his  weak  retainers. 

I  never  happened  to  meet  Edgar  Allan 
Poe,  but  during  my  girlhood  I  knew  inti- 
mately a  family  who  had  been  among  his 
nearest  friends  in  Richmond.  They  always 
spoke  of  "  Edgar  "  affectionately,  as  a  loveable, 
nervous  man,  who,  like  too  many  men  of  that 
day,  drank  hard,  and  fell  in  and  out  of  love 
easily.  They  testified  that  he  was  a  tender 
son  and  faithful  husband.  "  No  woman,"  they 
said,  "  was  ever  the  worse  for  Poe's  love." 

One  of  his  most  loyal  friends  was  Susan 
Archer  Talley,  a  young  girl  with  whom  he 
corresponded  for  years.  I  was  told,  then,  that 
she  preserved  as  her  chief  treasure  a  copy  of 
his  works  which  he  had  given  to  her.  The 
margin  of  almost  every  page  was  covered 
with  his  penciled  criticisms  of  his  own  work, 
usually  sharp  and  bitter  beyond  measure. 
Mrs.  Talley  Weiss  is  still  living.  She  prob- 
ably knows  what  became  of  this  book.  It  must 
have  been  lost,  for  no  collector  could  own 
such  a  treasure  now  without  boasting  of  it  to 
the  public. 

[211] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

Poe's  detractors,  who  never  saw  him,  as- 
serted that  even  as  a  boy  he  was  "  a  moral 
monster,"  and  was  driven  from  the  house  of 
his  adopted  father,  Mr.  Allen,  on  account 
of  some  crime, ."  too  horrible  to  record  upon 
any  other  register  than  that  of  Hell."  My 
friends,  who  had  known  him  since  his  child- 
hood, stated  that  his  worst  fault  was  that  he 
occasionally  came  home  drunk.  Mr.  Allen's 
new  wife  naturally  objected  to  this  conduct. 
A  quarrel  ensued,  and  the  boy  went  out  to 
earn  his  own  living. 

After  I  came  to  live  in  Philadelphia,  I 
heard  much  of  Poe  from  Charles  J.  Peterson, 
who,  as  the  editor  of  "  Graham's  Magazine," 
had  known  the  poor  Virginian  intimately  for 
six  years. 

Mr.  Peterson  was  not  only  a  scholar,  but  a 
man  of  the  highest  honor  and  sincerity.  He 
described  Poe  as  "  a  most  gentle  gentle- 
man, always  courteous,  kindly,  and  honorable. 
He  had  one  very  common  failing  and  was 
ashamed  of  it.  His  character  was  in  no  single 
feature  unnatural  or  abnormal."  He  said  that 
R.  W.  Griswold  had  for  years  a  most  intense 
[212] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

jealousy  and  dislike  of  Poe,  and  frequently 
boasted  to  Mr.  Peterson  that  he  "  had  a  rod 
in  pickle  for  that  fellow."  He  never,  how- 
ever, made  any  attack  on  Poe  while  he  was 
living,  but  as  soon  as  he  was  dead,  an  article 
charging  him  with  being  a  soulless  monster, 
addicted  to  abnormal  crimes,  was  written  by 
Griswold  and  published  in  the  New  York 
"  Tribune,"  actually  before  the  poet  was  laid  in 
his  grave.  It  is  strange  that  the  public  should 
have  attached  any  importance  to  a  slander 
which  was  never  spoken  of  the  man  while  liv- 
ing, but  was  poured  out  with  inhuman  viru- 
lence upon  his  coffin  the  moment  that  the 
lips  were  dumb  that  could  have  answered  it. 

Poor  Poe,  thinking  that  Griswold  was  his 
friend,  left  a  request  that  he  should  act  as  his 
literary  executor,  thus  giving  him  the  power 
to  authoritatively  belittle  him  as  a  poet,  and 
vilify  him  as  a  man. 

We  all  know  how  brutally  this  power  was 
abused.  For  a  generation  the  country  was 
made  to  shudder  at  this  "  large-brained  soul- 
less creature,  a  unique  bundle  of  inhuman 
vices." 

[  2I3] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

All  this  is  over  now,  and  Poe  is  fairly 
judged.  The  world  recognizes  the  fact  that 
he  had  the  ordinary  faults  of  his  class  and 
time,  and  that  nothing  worse  could  be  said 
of  him.  In  other  countries  he  takes  rank  as 
our  greatest  poet.  Mr.  Griswold  is  remem- 
bered anywhere  only  as  the  man  who  belied 
him. 

Another  poet  whom  popular  prejudice 
clothed  with  abnormal  qualities  was  Walt 
Whitman.  His  disciples  regarded  him  as  the 
one  bard  of  the  century  —  the  only  one  that 
America  has  ever  produced.  His  voice,  they 
declared,  would  be  heard  by  all  the  listening 
nations  of  the  earth  as  he  proclaimed  univer- 
sal democracy,  as  one  that  chants  at  dawn  in 
the  forests  the  coming  of  a  new  day.  They 
claimed,  too,  that  he  was  not  only  the  one 
poet,  but  the  chief  Patriot  of  his  age,  the 
universal  brother  of  us  all,  with  a  heart 
big  enough  to  take  whole  races  home  to  it, 
and  to  still  their  hunger  and  pains  in  its 
love. 

Chief  of  these  excited  followers  was  William 
O'Connor,  a  kindly,  sincere  man,  who  left  his 

[2I4] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

cradle  with  his  imagination  at  white  heat  and 
never  suffered  it  to  cool  afterwards. 

He  was  a  little  man,  who  always  wore  a  high 
hat,  and  walked  on  tiptoe,  and  talked  in  super- 
latives, and  hurled  defiance  at  the  slave  power 
with  every  breath.  He  wrote  a  novel  called 
"  Harrington,"  which  he  hoped  would  rout  and 
vanquish  the  South  utterly.  After  the  war 
was  over,  he  took  a  brief  for  Bacon  vs.  Shake- 
speare, and  became  one  of  the  Pfaff  crowd  of 
Bohemians,  a  hater  of  orthodoxy,  a  dabbler 
in  all  kinds  of  heresies.  He  made  Walt  Whit- 
man an  idol,  and  sang  pagans  to  the  Good 
Gray  Poet  with  his  whole  being. 

William  O'Connor,  however,  calmed  down 
in  his  later  years,  and  under  the  guardian- 
ship of  Sumner  Kimball  found  a  place  in  the 
Life-Saving  Service.  Nobody  could  be  long 
factitious  in  the  atmosphere  of  that  most 
sane,  noble  department  of  the  government. 
O'Connor  did  much  quiet  good  work  in  it 
before  he  left  the  world. 

So  profound  was  the  faith  of  his  devotees 
in  Whitman  that  they  made  incessant  pilgrim- 
ages to  his  house  in  Camden  as  to  a  shrine, 

["5  3 


Bits  of  Gossip 

never  coming  away  without  laying  gifts  upon 
the  altar.  When  he  died  they  paid  homage 
to  the  memory  not  only  of  the  poet  but  the 
man,  saluting  him  as  the  "  most  eminent  cit- 
izen of  the  Republic."  The  shades  of  Con- 
fucius, Buddha,  and  the  Saviour  were  sum- 
moned at  his  grave,  to  welcome  their  peer 
into  the  heavens. 

On  the  other  side  was  a  large,  equally  un- 
reasonable public,  who  believed  Whitman  to 
have  been  a  sort  of  devil.  They  denied  him 
any  spark  of  divine  fire;  the  poems  which 
his  disciples  regarded  as  immortal  treasures 
of  inspiration  they  described  as  "dunghill 
heaps  of  filth  and  corruption."  They  held  the 
man  himself  to  have  been  a  monster  of  vice. 
He  was  discharged  from  the  service  of  the 
government,  when  a  member  of  the  Cabinet 
read  his  poems,  as  promptly  as  a  beast  of 
prey  would  be  driven  out  of  a  village  sewing 
circle,  and  by  special  edict  the  poems  were 
forbidden  circulation  in  the  mails. 

Surely  a  cool  posterity  will  acknowledge 
that  this  huge,  uncouth  fellow  had  the  eye 
and  tongue  of  the  seer.  To  him,  as  to  Dante 
[216] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

and  the  oracle,  it  was  given  sometimes  to  be 
spokesman  for  the  gods,  to  talk  of  death  and 
life,  in  words  not  unworthy  of  their  themes. 

But  while  the  light  burning  within  may- 
have  been  divine,  the  outer  case  of  the  lamp 
was  assuredly  cheap  enough.  Whitman  was, 
from  first  to  last,  a  boorish,  awkward  poseur. 
He  sang  of  the  workingman  as  of  a  god,  but 
he  never  did  an  hour's  work  himself  if  he 
could  live  by  alms ;  he  sounded  the  note  of 
battle  for  the  slave,  but  he  never  shouldered 
a  gun  in  the  fight ;  he  cursed  shams,  while  he 
played  the  part  of  "  bard,"  as  he  conceived  it, 
in  flowing  hair  and  beard,  gray  clothes,  broad 
rolling  collar  and  huge  pearl  buttons,  chan- 
ging even  his  name  to  suit  the  role;  he  saluted 
Christ  as  "  my  comrade,"  declaring  that  "  we 
walk  together  the  earth  over,  making  our  in- 
effaceable mark  upon  time  and  the  eras," 
while  he,  Whitman,  was  loafing  in  a  com- 
fortable house  in  Camden,  provided  for  him 
by  charity,  accepting  weekly  the  hard-earned 
money  of  poor  young  men,  while  he  had  thou- 
sands hoarded  which  he  spent  in  building  a 
tawdry  monument  to  himself.  As  to  the  im- 
[217] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

morality  in  his  poems,  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
talk  of  demoniac  possession,  as  do  his  enemies. 
Whitman  simply  was  indecent  as  thousands 
of  other  men  are  indecent,  who  are  coarse  by 
nature  and  vulgar  by  breeding.  Hawthorne, 
when  he  saw  the  Venus  of  the  Uffizi  Palace, 
acknowledged  its  greatness,  but  added,  "  To 
my  mind  Titian  was  a  very  nasty  old  man  " 
—  a  criticism  which  goes  to  the  root  of  the 
matter  in  Whitman  as  in  Titian,  and  leaves 
no  more  to  be  said. 

These  were  men  of  genius.  But  there  have 
been  others  in  my  time  who  had  no  genius, 
but  who  succeeded  in  acquiring  great  influ- 
ence over  their  generation  by  the  exactness 
with  which  they  knew  and  used  their  talent. 
Self-recognition,  perhaps,  would  be  the  best 
name  for  the  quality. 

Of  course  we  all,  at  once,  think  of  Macau- 
lay  as  foremost  among  these  skillful  and  pru- 
dent craftsmen  in  the  clan  that  deals  with 
ideas  and  words. 

In  this  country  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  probably, 
had  more  of  this  peculiar  clarity  of  self-insight 
than  any  of  our  other  writers.   Greater  men 

[ai8] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

than  he  sometimes  tripped  because  they  ven- 
tured outside  of  their  limits.  Poe  often  es- 
sayed to  be  scientific,  Longfellow  dramatic, 
and  Hawthorne  logical. 

But  the  Doctor,  or  Timothy  Titcomb,  as  he 
was  called  by  the  worshiping  boys  and  girls 
of  the  sixties,  knew  his  Muse  and  never  mis- 
took her  meaning  for  a  moment.  She  was  no 
scatter-brained,  raving  Delphian  priestess,  but 
a  healthy,  friendly,  clear-minded  counselor, 
who  gave  out  her  oracles  daily  to  the  young 
folks —  oracles  alive  with  kindliness  and  com- 
mon sense. 

The  Doctor's  work  in  the  world  was  like 
the  water  of  a  mountain  spring,  —  it  brought 
out  a  good,  useful  growth  wherever  it  went. 
We  sing  the  praises  of  the  red  wine  which 
mounts  to  the  head  in  a  fine  frenzy  now  and 
then.  But  we  are  apt  to  undervalue  the  plain 
water  which  keeps  things  clean  and  whole- 
some for  us. 

The    Doctor  himself  was  as  kindly  and 

wholesome  as  his  poetry.    I  hope  you  do  not 

know  already  one  story  of  him,  which  I  must 

tell  you,  as  it  shows  how  much  can  be  done 

[219] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

by  a  man  who  accurately  knows  himself  and 
his  limits. 

Two  Americans  chanced  to  meet  in  Swit- 
zerland one  day,  and  speedily  felt  a  strong 
mutual  approbation  and  liking  for  each  other. 
One  was  the  then  popular  poet,  Timothy  Tit- 
comb,  and  the  other  was  Roswell  Smith,  a 
man  who  had  shrewd  business  ability,  a  pas- 
sionate love  of  letters,  and  capital.  Together, 
standing  on  the  bridge  at  Bale,  they  conceived 
the  idea  of  a  magazine  which  should  be  to 
American  literature  as  the  lighting  of  a 
great  lamp.  They  came  home  and  issued  it. 
Dr.  Holland  was  the  editor  and  his  friend 
the  publisher,  and  as  long  as  they  lived  the 
friendship  and  the  work  planned  that  morning 
on  the  bridge  grew  and  prospered.  Neither 
man  interfered  with  the  other.  Each  knew 
his  bounds  and  kept  inside  of  them. 

Outside  of  business  both  were  friendly, 
hopeful  men,  eager  to  help  their  fellow  travel- 
ers on  their  journey.  Many  a  successful  au- 
thor and  artist  now  living  owes  his  first 
chance  to  the  publisher  and  editor  of  the  old 
"  Scribner's." 

[  220  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  men  I  ever 
knew  was  Daniel  S.  Ford,  the  editor  of  the 
"  Youth's  Companion."  He  was  set  apart  from 
all  other  men  by  his  total  lack  of  self-appre- 
ciation. He  sincerely  believed  that  that  paper 
was  a  lever  which  would  uplift  the  minds  and 
souls  of  American  children.  He  gave  his  life 
to  this  work,  but  he  kept  himself  wholly  out 
of  sight.  The  paper  was  conducted  under  a 
fictitious  name.  His  own  never  appeared  in 
it  until  after  his  death.  He  blotted  himself 
out  of  view,  even  out  of  his  own  view.  It  was 
a  noble  trait  and  almost  unique  among  Amer- 
icans. 

As  for  the  women  who  have  won  fame  in 
my  day,  the  first  fact  which  strikes  me  on 
turning  to  them  is  how  entirely  the  popular 
woman  of  this  country  differs  from  that  of 
older  peoples. 

We  all  know  the  grande  dame  of  France 
and  England,  though  we  never  may  have  seen 
her.  She  is  as  distinct  a  personality  as  the 
Sphinx  or  the  Pope. 

She  may  be  beautiful  or  ugly,  a  saint  or 
a  Messalina,  but  she  must  be  the  outgrowth 

[221  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

of  a  class  set  apart  for  generations  as  noble 
—  finer  than  God's  other  creatures,  and  she 
must  have,  in  consequence  of  this  setting 
apart,  that  aloofness,  that  certain  flavor  of 
rank  in  manner  and  in  look,  to  which  most 
men  do  bow  down  even  against  their  will. 
Beauty,  wit,  wealth,  and  virtue  are  aids  to  her 
making  up,  but  not  necessities.  She  has  done 
without  each  and  all  of  them,  and  still  held 
her  dominant  place  in  life  and  in  history. 

Read  the  story  of  Lady  Sarah  Lennox  as 
written  the  other  day  by  her  descendants. 
She  had  a  current  of  blood  in  her  veins 
coming  down  through  princes  from  the  very 
beginnings  of  England;  her  kinsfolk  were 
dukes  and  earls ;  French  baronnes  and 
Russian  princesses  were  her  familiar  gos- 
sips. George  III  loved  her,  and  she  believed 
was  wretched  all  of  his  life  because  he  was 
not  allowed  to  place  her  beside  him  on  the 
throne.  She  was  —  and  never  forgot  that  she 
was  — of  the  ruling  race  in  England.  But  her 
mind  was  of  low  rank ;  she  talked  and  wrote 
and  thought  in  atrocious  English ;  she  was 
blind  to  all  of  the  great  issues  that  move  the 

[  222  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

world.  She  made  of  politics  and  literature 
cheap  gossip.  Her  coquetry,  and  the  crime 
to  which  it  brought  her,  was  that  of  a  bar- 
maid. 

Not  this  the  kind  of  woman  surely  whom 
Americans  elect  their  Great  Lady.  My  coun- 
trymen do  not  even  cede  this  title  to  the 
American  girls  whose  wealth  or  beauty  has 
found  places  recently  for  them  among  the 
English  nobility.  They  are  good-naturedly 
glad  to  hear  that  Miss  Pratt  and  Miss  Smith 
are  holding  their  own  as  Duchess  and  Prin- 
cess over  there.  But  they  pay  no  more  hom- 
age to  them  now  than  they  did  when  they 
were  schoolgirls  and  wore  straw  hats  instead 
of  coronets. 

There  have  been,  however,  a  few  women 
who  have  been  greatly  venerated  and  loved 
in  this  country.  There  could  be  no  better 
index  to  the  kind  of  man  that  the  American 
himself  is,  than  are  these  women  whom  he  has 
delighted  to  honor. 

Oddly  enough,  the  women  who  have  won 
the  hearts  of  our  populace  are  not  those  whom 
their  own  sex  has  hailed  as  leaders.  No  wo- 
[  223] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

man  author  or  clever  reformer,  no  artist,  no 
champion  of  her  sex,  has  ever  been  made  a 
popular  idol  by  Americans. 

The  South  always  chose  its  reigning  favor- 
ite, first  for  her  power  to  charm,  and  next  for 
her  beauty.  There  always  has  been  a  reign- 
ing favorite  down  there.  Each  city  and  vil- 
lage in  that  quarter  has  to-day  its  noted  belle, 
who  is  guarded  and  jealously  served  by  the 
public  with  a  pride  and  devotion  incompre- 
hensible to  any  man  born  north  of  the  Ohio. 
But  far  above  this  countless  galaxy  have 
shone  a  few  fixed  stars,  whose  right  to  shine 
is  as  certain  as  that  of  the  moon  or  planets. 

Nelly  Custis,  Theodosia  Burr,  Dolly  Mad- 
ison, the  Carroll  sisters,  Octavia  Le  Vert, 
Sallie  Ward,  Winnie  Davis,  —  how  shall  I 
call  the  roll  without  fear  of  angry  reminders 
of  the  countless  illustrious  "  daughters  of  the 
Southland  "  whom  I  have  missed  ?  The  es- 
sential point  to  us  is,  not  who  they  were,  but 
why  were  they  crowned  queens  of  love  and 
beauty  ?  What  did  southern  men  demand  in 
the  woman  to  whom  they  paid  allegiance  ? 

They  all  had  the  distinction  of  good  birth 

[  224] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

and  breeding ;  they  sometimes  had  beauty, 
but  always  that  personal  attraction,  that 
sweet,  soft,  elusive  charm  of  the  purely  femi- 
nine woman.  The  old-time  Southerners  had 
very  much  the  feeling  toward  their  reigning 
belle  that  the  Italian  peasant  once  had  for 
the  Madonna.  She  expressed  to  him  purity, 
motherhood,  and  religion,  all  in  one. 

I  was  once  in  a  southern  town  when  one  of 
these  famous  beauties  passed  through  on  her 
way  to  the  Virginia  Springs.  She  remained 
all  day  with  her  escort  in  the  little  village  inn, 
and  all  day  a  closely  packed  mass  of  men 
waited  patiently  outside  to  see  her.  Probably 
every  man  in  the  town  was  there.  When  the 
young  girl  was  brought  out  at  last  to  enter 
her  coach,  every  head  was  uncovered.  There 
was  not  a  sound  nor  a  whisper.  With  a  de- 
ference that  was  almost  reverent  they  gazed 
at  her  beauty  and  blushes,  and  stood  bare- 
headed and  still  silent  until  she  was  out  of 
sight. 

Does  this  seem  ridiculous  to  you  ?  It  was 
the  natural  homage  of  the  man  to  youth  and 
beauty  and  innocence,  and  I  think  it  was  a 

C225] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

wholesome  thing  for  both  the  man  and  the 
woman. 

The  women  who  have  been  personally  pop- 
ular and  influential  in  the  North  have  been 
of  the  same  type,  with  the  addition  in  most 
cases  of  some  intellectual  force. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  the  wo- 
man who  probably  was  best  known  and  most 
loved  in  this  country  was  Jessie  Benton  Fre- 
mont She  was  before  the  public  by  neces- 
sity. Benton's  daughter  naturally  was  known 
to  everybody.  She  came,  too,  from  the  Vir- 
ginia Preston  family,  and  no  woman  of  that 
blood  ever  could  be  ignored,  go  where  she 
might.  You  might  love  her  or  hate  her,  but 
despise  her  you  could  not. 

Mrs.  Fremont,  too,  was  the  wife  of  the 
most  picturesque  of  our  political  leaders. 
Everybody  knew  the  story  of  how  he  had 
won  her ;  how  the  young  girl  had  seen,  as 
nobody  else  had  done,  in  the  obscure,  poor 
young  soldier  the  coming  hero,  the  man  ready 
to  give  his  life  for  a  great  idea  ;  how  they  had 
run  away  together  and  married  ;  how  he  had 
conquered  a  great  territory  for  the  country ; 
[  226  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

how  they  had  starved  together  in  California 
and  squandered  a  fortune  together  in  Paris. 
The  popular  imagination  was  fired  by  the 
young  girl,  who  in  September  was  cooking 
flapjacks  and  bacon  for  her  husband's  dinner 
in  a  canon,  and  in  December  sat  in  the  box 
at  the  Opera  opposite  the  Empress,  intent 
on  outshining  Eugenie  in  beauty  and  in 
dress. 

When  the  war  began  she  threw  herself  with 
fervor  into  the  northern  cause,  chiefly,  I  sus- 
pect, because  it  was  her  husband's  cause.  She 
went  with  him  from  camp  to  camp,  to  Mis- 
souri, to  Virginia,  to  headquarters  at  Wash- 
ington, firing,  uplifting  the  purpose  of  every 
man  who  came  near  her.  She  had  great 
beauty,  an  education  more  broad  and  thorough 
than  that  of  most  men,  and  a  wit  and  mag- 
netic charm  probably  never  equaled  by  any 
American  woman.  Political  leaders  discussed 
their  problems  with  her,  and  more  than  once 
her  keen  intuition  showed  them  their  way  to 
success ;  regiments  begged  her  blessing  on 
their  colors  ;  enthusiastic  young  men  formed 
themselves  into  bands  of  "  Jessie's  Scouts " 
[  227] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

or  "  Jessie's  Lancers,"  and  went  out  gayly  to 
the  field  to  kill  or  be  killed. 

But  I  do  not  believe  that  it  was  her  wit  or 
education  or  keen  intellect  which  gave  her 
this  power  over  men.  On  the  contrary,  they 
were  apt  to  be  a  little  jealous  of  them.  It  was 
the  eager,  whole-hearted,  beautiful  woman, 
who  ranked  her  husband  as  the  first  of  men, 
who  loved  freedom  and  her  country  passion- 
ately because  John  C.  Fremont  loved  them  — 
that  they  followed  and  served. 

There  was  doubtless  something  in  her  of 
the  French  grande  dame.  De  Stael  had  not 
a  more  piercing  wit,  nor  Recamier  a  finer 
quality  of  beauty,  but  below  and  apart  from 
either  was  her  personal  magnetism.  What- 
ever might  be  the  room  into  which  she  came, 
whether  in  a  palace  or  the  shack  of  a  ranch, 
she  was  the  fire  burning  in  it,  the  lamp  that 
shone  in  it,  the  instrument  of  music  that 
struck  a  note  to  which  your  secret  self  replied. 

The  most  curious  instance,  however,  of  the 
power  which  lies  in  the  purely  feminine  quali- 
ties in  a  woman  is  that  of  Frances  Willard. 
In  her  case,  oddly  enough,  it  was  her  own 

[  228] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

sex  that  was  influenced  by  them.  Probably 
no  woman  who  spoke  English  ever  had  as 
large  a  following  of  women  as  she.  Shrewd 
matrons  and  eager  young  girls,  who  came 
once  into  contact  with  this  gentle,  soft-spoken 
lady,  gave  her  ever  after  a  passionate  affection 
and  adherence.  She  undertook  an  almost  im- 
possible work,  to  stamp  out  a  universal  evil. 
She  had  the  courage  of  a  great  fighter,  but 
her  methods  of  warfare  were  always  most 
simple  and  feminine.  She  told  the  world  the 
story  of  her  sister,  an  innocent  young  girl 
who  had  planned  to  do  this  work  for  human- 
ity, and  dying,  had  left  it  in  her  hands.  She 
told  the  pathetic  little  story,  and  then  appealed 
to  women  by  their  love  for  their  homes  and 
for  God  to  help  her  to  finish  the  work ;  she 
appealed  to  men  by  their  love  for  their 
mothers,  their  wives,  and  their  children,  to 
suffer  them  to  finish  it.  These  surely  were  a 
woman's  ways  of  working. 

I  never  saw  Frances  Willard  until  a  year 
before  her  death.  Knowing  how  mighty  was 
the  world-old  dragon  which  she  had  set  out  to 
slay,  and  how  huge  the  army  which  she  so 

[  229] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

skillfully  commanded,  I  pictured  her  to  my- 
self as  a  modern  Boadicea,  large,  strident  in 
voice,  and  masterful  in  manner.  I  found  a 
delicate,  soft-eyed  little  woman,  wonderfully 
tactful,  ready  to  laugh  at  a  joke,  ready  to  fall 
into  womanish  little  tempers  when  contra- 
dicted, but,  still  more  than  all,  ready  to  pour 
out  kindness  and  affection  upon  every  wrong- 
doer. She  would  not  drive  him,  but  would 
lead  him  tenderly  up  to  the  straight  gate  and 
along  the  narrow  path. 

It  was  in  England  that  I  saw  her.  Eng- 
lishmen, as  we  all  know,  have  little  sympathy 
with  woman  reformers  of  the  belligerent  class. 
It  was  amusing  to  see  how  quickly  they  were 
disarmed  by  Frances  Willard's  most  feminine 
methods  of  attack. 

I  have  known  other  women  —  whom  I  do 
not  name  because  they  are  still  living  —  who 
have  exerted  a  wider  and  stronger  influence 
in  this  country  than  any  of  these  of  whom  I 
have  spoken.  In  every  instance  there  is 
nothing  masculine  in  their  character  or 
habits  of  thought;  they  are  womanly,  even 
womanish  in  both. 

[  230  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

Is  not  that  a  significant  fact  ? 

It  would  seem  that,  even  in  this  strenuous 
day,  that  woman  does  her  work  most  effec- 
tively who  uses  only  the  woman's  methods. 

I  think  that  I  will  end  this  long  gossip 
here,  not  because  I  know  no  more  great 
men,  but  because  I  have  known  so  many  that 
I  cannot  reckon  them. 

For  it  is  an  odd  fact  that  when  we  look  back 
as  we  grow  old,  the  famous  people  do  not  rise 
above  the  nameless  folk  who  filled  for  us  the 
years  that  are  gone.  Not  that  the  heroes  are 
less  heroic  to  us,  but  we  see  that  the  nameless 
folk  only  lacked  the  chance  to  do  great  deeds 
also. 

"  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  ? "  we  say, 
"Lee?  Grant?  DeWet?  Would  not  Smith 
or  Black,  whom  we  used  to  know,  have  sounded 
as  loud  bugle-calls  as  theirs  to  the  world  if 
the  bugle  had  ever  been  put  to  their  lips  ?  " 

Smith  and  Black  probably  puzzled  and 
bored  us  when  we  jogged  along  the  path  in 
their  company,  but  now  that  we  are  old  we 
see  that  they  were  made  of  heroic  stuff. 

[23i  ] 


Bits  of  Gossip 

For  it  is  a  mistake  to  talk  of  the  twilight 
of  age,  or  the  blurred  sight  of  old  people. 
The  long  day  grows  clearer  at  its  close,  and 
the  petty  fogs  of  prejudice  which  rose  be- 
tween us  and  our  fellows  in  youth  melt  away 
as  the  sun  goes  down.  At  last  we  see  God's 
creatures  as  they  are. 

So  now,  when  I  look  back  at  the  long  road 
down  which  I  have  come,  it  seems  to  me  to 
be  filled  with  men  and  women  who  could 
have  sounded  the  call  which  leads  the  world 
to  great  deeds.  But  the  bugle  never  was  put 
to  their  lips. 

I  see  now,  too,  how  unselfish  and  true  were 
most  of  the  folk  who  jostled  me  every  day  on 
my  journey.  I  used  to  like  or  dislike  them  as 
Democrats  or  Republicans,  whites,  Indians 
or  negroes,  criminals  or  Christians. 

Now,  I  only  see  men  and  women  slaving 
for  their  children  ;  husbands  and  wives  sacri- 
ficing their  lives  to  each  other ;  loveable  boys, 
girls  with  their  queer  new  chivalric  notions.  I 
see  the  fun,  the  humor,  the  tragedy  in  it  all ; 
the  desperate  struggle  of  each  one,  day  by 
day,  to  be  clean  and  decent  and  true. 

[  232  ] 


Above  Their  Fellows 

The  world  is  crowded  with  brave  and 
friendly  souls,  though  they  may  be  slow  in 
recognizing  one  another. 

And  of  all  the  good  things  for  which  now, 
in  the  evening,  I  have  to  thank  the  Father  of 
us  all,  the  best  is,  that  I  have  known  so  many 
of  them,  and  for  30  long  have  kept  them 
company. 


[  233  ] 


(*2rbe  flitocrtfibe  JDrcsji 

Electrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  <5r*  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mats.,  U.S.  A. 


